THE APOTHEOSIS OF LAW.

Photogravure after .the Original Painting by Baudry.

i x IMII KM !» is the motto of Baudry's picture as it was the inspira-
cat orations of Chatham. Burke, and Erskine.

OFFICIAL EDITION

THE

TOftorlb'8 aBeet ©rations

FROM THE

EARLIEST PERIOD TO THE PRESENT TIME

TJTO

DAVID J?5BREWER

«

EDITOR

EDWARD A. ALLEN WILLIAM SCHUYLER

ASSOCIATE EDITORS

UTO

TEN VOLUMES

VOLUME V.

ST. LOUIS CHICAGO

FERD. P. KAISER
isee

Official edition

SPECIAL TESTIMONIAL SET

Copyright 1899

BY

FERD. P. KAISER

All rights reserved

THE WERNER COMPANY

PRINTERS AND BINDERS
AKRON, OHIO

THE ADVISORY COUNCIL

THE RIGHT HON. SIR CHARLES WENTWORTH DILKE, Bart,
Member of Parliament — Author of < Greater Britain,* etc.,

London, England.

WILLIAM DRAPER LEWIS, PH. D.,
Dean of the Department of Law,

UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA, Philadelphia.
WILLIAM P. TRENT, M.A.,

Dean of the Department of Arts and Sciences, and Professor of Eng-
lish and History, UNIVERSITY OF THE SOUTH, Sewanee, Tenn.

W. STUART SYMINGTON, JR., PH. D.,

Professor of the Romance Languages,

AMHERST COLLEGE, Amherst, Mass.

ALCEE FORTIER, LIT. D.,

Professor of the Romance Languages,

TULANE UNIVERSITY, New Orleans, La.
WILLIAM VINCENT BYARS,

Journalist, St Louis, Mo.

RICHARD GOTTHEIL, PH. D.,

Professor of Oriental Languages,

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, in the city of New York.

AUSTIN H. MERRILL, A.M.,

Professor of Elocution, VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY, Nashville, Tenn.

SHELDON JACKSON, D. D., LL. D.,

Bureau of Education, Washington, D. C,

A. MARSHALL ELLIOTT, PH.D., LL. D.,

Professor of the Romance Languages,

JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY, Baltimore, Md.
JOHN W. MILLION, A. M.,

President of HARDIN COLLEGE, Mexico, Mo.

J. RAYMOND BRACKETT, PH. D.,

Dean of the College of Liberal Arts, and Professor of Comparative
Literature, UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO, Boulder, Colo.

WILLIAM F. PEIRCE, A.M., L.H.D.,

President of KENYON COLLEGE, Gambier, Ohio.

S. PLANTZ, PH.D..D. D.,

President of LAWRENCE UNIVERSITY, Appleton, Wis.

GEORGE TAYLOE WINSTON, LL.D.,

President of the UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS, Austin. Texas,

TABLE OF CONTENTS
VOLUME V

LIVED PAGE

DANTON, GEORGE JACQUES 1 759-1794 1623

<( To Dare, to Dare Again ; Always to Dare w
<( Let France Be Free, Though My Name Were Ac-
cursed w

Against Imprisonment for Debt
Education, Free and Compulsory
Freedom of Worship
"Squeezing the Sponge })

DAVIS, DAVID 1815-1886 1634

On Appeal from the Caucus

DAVIS, HENRY WINTER 1817-1865 1641

Reasons for Refusing to Part Company with the

South
Constitutional Difficulties of Reconstruction

DAVIS, JEFFERSON 1808-1889 1650

Announcing the Secession of Mississippi
Inaugural Address of 1861
Against Clay and Compromise

DAVITT, MICHAEL 1846- 1666

Ireland a Nation, Self-Chartered and Self-Ruled

DAWES, HENRY LAURENS 1816- 1671

The Tariff Commission of 1880

DAYTON, WILLIAM L. 1807-1864 1676

Arraigning President Polk
Issues Against Slavery Forced by the Mexican War

VI

LIVED PAGE

DEMOSTHENES 384-322 B. C. 1685

The Oration on the Crown
The Second Olynthiac
The Oration on the Peace
The Second Philippic

DEPEW, CHAUNCEY M. 1834- 1769

The Columbian Oration

Liberty Enlightening the World

The Military Spirit in America

England and America Since the Spanish War

Poetry and Politics in Britain

DERBY, THE EARL OF 1799-1869 1800

The Emancipation of British Negroes

X)ERING, SIR EDWARD 1598-1644 1805

For the Encouragement of Learning
Religious Controversy in Parliament

DESEZE, RAYMOND 1748-1828 1811

Defending Louis XVI.

DESMOULINS, CAMILLE 1760-1794 1815

Live Free or Die

D'EwES, SIR SIMON 1602-1650 1818

The Antiquity of Cambridge

DEWEY, ORVILLE 1794-1882 1822

The Genius of Demosthenes
The Rust of Riches

DEXTER, SAMUEL 1761-1816 1825

« The Higher Law » of Self-Defense

DIAZ, PORFIRIO 1830- 1832

Mexican Progress

DICKERSON, MAHLON 1769-1853 1836

The Alien and Sedition Acts of the Adams Admin-
istration

vii

LIVED PACK

DICKINSON, DANIEL S. 1800-1866 1844

Rebuking Senator Clemens of Alabama

DICKINSON, JOHN 1732-1808 1849

The Declaration on Taking Up Arms

DIDON, PERE 1840- 1856

Christ and Higher Criticism

DIGBY, GEORGE, LORD 1612-1676 1861

* Grievances and Oppressions n Under Charles I.
The Army in Domestic Politics

DILKE, SIR CHARLES WENTWORTH, BART. 1843- 1871

America
Omphalism

Dix, JOHN A. 1798-1879 1883

Christianity and Politics

DOD, ALBERT B. 1805-1845 1885

The Value of Truth

DONNE, JOHN 1753-1631 1888

Man Immortal, Body and Soul

DOOLITTLE, JAMES R. 1815- 1891

The Attitude of the West in the Civil War
In Favor of Re-Union

DORSET, THE EARL OF 1591-1652 1898

In Favor of Slitting Prynne's Nose

DOUGHERTY, DANIEL 1826-1889 1904

« Hancock the Superb9

DOUGLAS, FREDERICK 1817-1895 1906

A Plea for Free Speech in Boston

DOUGLAS, STEPHEN A. 1813-1861 1910

Reply to Lincoln

"Expansion* and Co-operation with England
Kansas and <( Squatter Sovereignty )}
The John Brown Raid
The Issues of 1861

Vlll

LIVED PAGE

Dow, LORENZO, JUNIOR 1777-1834 1932

Improvement in America
Hope and Despair

DRAKE, CHARLES D. 1811-1892 1936

Against (< Copperheads »

DRUMMOND, HENRY 1851-1897 1940

The Greatest Thing in the World
Preparation for Learning
A Talk on Books

D WIGHT, TIMOTHY 1752-1817 1968

The Pursuit of Excellence

EDMUNDS, GEORGE F. 1828- 1971

The Constitution and the Electoral Commission

EDWARDS, JONATHAN 1703-1758 1976

Eternity of Hell Torments
Wrath Upon the Wicked to the Uttermost
Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God

ELIOT, SIR JOHN 1592-1632 1985

On the Petition of Right

ELLSWORTH, OLIVER 1745-1807 1993

Union and Coercion

EMERSON, RALPH WALDO 1803-1882 1999

The Greatness of a Plain American
The American Scholar
Man the Reformer
Uses of Great Men

FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS
VOLUME V

PAGE

The Apotheosis of Law Frontispiece

Danton on the Tenth of August (Portrait Design,

Photogravure) 1623

Demosthenes (Portrait, Photogravure) 1685

Chauncey M. Depew (Portrait, Photogravure) 1769

The Earl of Derby (Photogravure) 1800

The Gallery of Battles at Versailles (Photogravure) 1815

Stephen A. Douglas (Portrait, Photogravure) 1910

wEcce Homo!" (Photogravure) 1940

DANTON ON THE TENTH OF AUGUST.

Photogravure after an Undated French Design, having the Characteristics
of the Revolutionary Period.

|N THE tenth of August, 1792, Danton led the attack on the Tuileries.
He is shown in the illustration ordering re-enforcements to the attack
which is progressing in the background. In the portrayal of his
features, the illustration follows the most authentic portraits.

1623

GEORGE JACQUES DANTON
(1759-1794)

LNTON, the greatest of the French Jacobins, and one of the
most formidable figures in modern history, was born at
Arcis-sur-Aube, October 28th, 1759, and he had not completed
his thirty-fifth year when he went to the guillotine, declaring it better
to live a poor fisherman than to have anything to do with the gov-
ernment of men.

No other man in modern times has so well and so reasonably em-
bodied the latent fierceness of society. When the young French
Republic was hemmed round with enemies; when all the forces of
the world seemed leagued against the handful of radicals and fanatics
who were attempting to make a constructive force out of the chaotic
impulses of the Parisian mob, Danton gave the keynote of his own
character and of the character of the great epoch which created
him, in a single sentence: <(To conquer we have need to dare,
to dare again, always to dare; and France will be saved!® That
sentence and yet another of Danton's overthrew Bourbonism. The
other was: "Let France be free, though my name were accursed!0
When a man of average abilities and average education so devotes
himself to any cause that he accepts in advance, as a probable inci-
dent of his work, not merely death, but infamy, he has already more
than half accomplished the possibilities of such achievement as made
Danton the constructive power by virtue of which the French Re-
public of the last quarter of the nineteenth century developed out of
the Reign of Terror. In the Arabian story those who attempt to
climb an enchanted mountain to find the talisman of power at the
top are assailed at every step of their upward progress by shrieks of
execration from unseen enemies attacking them from behind with
every imaginable calumny, every conceivable insult. Those who stop
to answer or turn back to punish these intangible "conservative
forces0 are at once transformed to smooth, black stones, destined to
remain inert under the power of obstruction until some one comes,
so strong, so self-contained, so capable of maintaining a set purpose,
that, like Danton, he will press forward to his object without fearing
either the death or the infamy with which he is threatened. Then
the smooth stones once more become men, and by virtue of the

GEORGE JACQUES DANTON

strength of the one leader as they crowd around him, all their fail-
ures become a part of his success.

If the story were an allegory as it seems to be, it would come
nearer than any biography of Danton can come to suggesting the
secret of his success and of his overthrow. He was at once devoted
and desperate. Threatened with everlasting infamy, he considered
what it would mean, and took the risk. He saw certain death before
him, and went forward to meet it, shrinking less from it for himself
than he had done in inflicting it on others. It is doubtful if such a
man could be created except through the very forces he so fiercely
antagonized. The impulse of tyranny, of mastering men so as to
compel them at their peril to accept the will of another, is shown in
the life of Danton as it was in that of the other Attilas who are
recognized by the generations after them as (< Scourges of God." But
neither an Attila nor a Danton could exist in a normal society. It is
only when a civilization is effete that the strongest men become at
once disorganizers and reorganizers. It is part of the theory of
Pasteur that as soon as life leaves matter the same invisible organ-
isms which operated to keep it alive begin to disintegrate it, that it
may be reorganized into other, and in the sum of things into higher
forms of life. We cannot study the life and work of such menacing
and Titanic figures as Danton without seeing that in its economies
and the conservation of its energies, nature is a unit, true to itself
in what is greatest as in what is least.

Danton was a struggling young lawyer in Paris when the Revolu-
tion overtook him. In the Cordeliers Club he fitted himself for the
popular leadership which came to him as a result of his fitness, when
Mirabeau, the idol of the people, deserted them for the court. Called
the "Mirabeau of the Sans-Culottes,* Danton did not disdain the title.
He accepted as an existing fact the wild desire of the populace of
Paris to be free; their fierce determination to go to any extreme
rather than return to the old order of things; and counting on it
not only as a fact but as a force of the greatest possibilities, he at-
tempted to use it first to demolish entirely the ruins of the monarchy
and on the old foundations to build the splendid structure of his
ideal Republic. His people were not fit for his ideal, nor was he
himself. Loving justice, mercy, and liberty, he could still reconcile
himself to shedding the blood of those he respected for their inten-
tions, while he opposed their purposes. In his own death he foresaw
and prophesied that of Robespierre. No doubt, he foresaw the
guillotine for himself in the death of Vergniaud. It is certain
that he was doomed when, regretting the (< logic of the situation *
which sent the Girondists to the scaffold, he did not oppose to it the
same fiery energy that had saved the Republic from the Bourbons.

GEORGE JACQUES DANTON

But his character shows always the same radical fault which appears
in his oratory. He had for the time being the almost omnipotent
power of passion, directed by intellect, but too intense to be sus-
tained, and ending in inevitable reaction. It was in the impotence of
such a reaction that on April sth, 1794, Danton accepted the inevit-
able and went to the scaffold, leaving France and civilization "in a
frightful welter," out of which were to come Napoleon, Hugo, Thiers,
and Gambetta, Garrison, Phillips, Sumner, and Lincoln.

W. V. B.

TO DARE, TO DARE AGAIN; ALWAYS TO DARE

(Delivered in the National Assembly, September ad, 1792, on the Defense of

the Republic)

IT SEEMS a satisfaction for the ministers of a free people to an-
nounce to them that their country will be saved. All are

stirred, all are enthused, all burn to enter the combat.

You know that Verdun is not yet in the power of our ene-
mies and that its garrison swears to immolate the first who
breathes a proposition of surrender.

One portion of our people will guard our frontiers, another
will dig and arm the entrenchments, the third with pikes will
defend the interior of our cities. Paris will second these great
efforts. The commissioners of the Commune will solemnly pro-
claim to the citizens the invitation to arm and march to the de-
fense of the country. At such a moment you can proclaim that
the capital deserves the esteem of all France. At such a mo-
ment this National Assembly becomes a veritable committee of
war. We ask that you concur with us in directing this sublime
movement of the people, by naming commissioners to second and
assist all these great measures. We ask that any one refusing
to give personal service or to furnish arms shall meet the pun-
ishment of death. We ask that proper instructions be given to
the citizens to direct their movements. We ask that carriers be
sent to all the departments to notify them of the decrees that
you proclaim here. The tocsin we shall sound is not the alarm
signal of danger, it orders the charge on the enemies of France.
[Applause.] To conquer we have need to dare, to dare again,
always to dare! And France will be saved!

(Pour les vaincre, il nous faut de Vaudace; encore de Faudace,
toujours de Vaudace; et la France est sauvSe.)

GEORGE JACQUES DANTON

«LET FRANCE BE FREE, THOUGH MY NAME WERE ACCURSED »

(On the Disasters on the Frontier — Delivered in Convention, March

loth, 1793)

THE general considerations that have been presented to you are
true ; but at this moment it is less necessary to examine the
causes of the disasters that have struck us than to apply
their remedy rapidly. When the edifice is on fire, I do not join
the rascals who would steal the furniture, I extinguish the flames.
I tell you therefore you should be convinced by the dispatches
of Dumouriez that you have not a moment to spare in saving
the Republic.

Dumouriez conceived a plan which did honor to his genius.
I would render him greater justice and praise than I did recently.
But three months ago he announced to the executive power, your
General Committee of Defense, that if we were not audacious
enough to invade Holland in the middle of winter, to declare in-
stantly against England the war which actually we had long
been making, that we would double the difficulties of our cam-
paign, in giving our enemies the time to deploy their forces.
Since we failed to recognize this stroke of his genius, we must
now repair our faults.

Dumouriez is not discouraged ; he is in the middle of Holland,
where he will find munitions of war; to overthrow all our ene-
mies, he wants but Frenchmen, and France is filled with citizens.
Would we be free ? If we no longer desire it, let us perish, for
we have all sworn it. If we wish it, let all march to defend our
independence. Your enemies are making their last efforts. Pitt
recognizing he has all to lose, dares spare nothing. Take Hol-
land, and Carthage is destroyed and England can no longer exist
but for Liberty! Let Holland be conquered to Liberty; and even
the commercial aristocracy itself, which at the moment dominates
the English people, would rise against the government which had
dragged it into this despotic war against a free people. They
would overthrow this ministry of stupidity, who thought the
methods of the ancien regime could smother the genius of Lib-
erty breathing in France. This ministry once overthrown in the
interests of commerce, the party of Liberty would show itself;
for it is not dead! And if you know your duties, if your com-
missioners leave at once, if you extend the hand to the strangers

GEORGE JACQUES DANTON

aspiring to destroy all forms of tyranny, France is saved and the
world is free.

Expedite, then, your commissioners; sustain them with your
energy; let them leave this very night, this very evening.

Let them say to the opulent classes, the aristocracy of Europe
must succumb to our efforts, and pay our debt, or you will have
to pay it! The people have nothing but blood, — they lavish it!
Go, then, ingrates, and lavish your wealth! [Wild applause.] See,
citizens, the fair destinies that await you. What! you have a
whole nation as a lever, its reason as your fulcrum and you have
not yet upturned the world! To do this we need firmness and
character, and of a truth we lack it. I put to one side all
passions. They are all strangers to me save a passion for the
public good.

In the most difficult situations, when the enemy was at the
gates of Paris, I said to those governing: (< Your discussions are
shameful, I can see but the enemy." [Fresh applause.] You
tire me by squabbling in place of occupying yourselves with
the safety of the Repubic! I repudiate you all as traitors to
our country! I place you all in the same line!" I said to them:
"What care I for my reputation! Let France be free, though
my name were accursed ! w What care I that I am called " a
blood-drinker"! Well, let us drink the blood of the enemies
of humanity, if needful; but let us struggle, let us achieve free-
dom. Some fear the departure of the commissioners may weaken
one or the other section of this convention. Vain fears! Carry
your energy everywhere. The pleasantest declaration will be to
announce to the people that the terrible debt weighing upon
them will be wrested from their enemies or that the rich will
shortly have to pay it. The national situation is cruel. The
representatives of value are no longer in equilibrium in the cir-
culation. The day of the workingman is lengthened beyond
necessity. A great corrective measure is necessary! Conquerors
of Holland reanimate in England the Republican party; let us
advance France and we shall go glorified to posterity. Achieve
these grand destinies; no more debates, no more quarrels, and
the Fatherland is saved.

l62g GEORGE JACQUES DANTON

AGAINST IMPRISONMENT FOR DEBT

(Delivered in the Convention, March gfh, 1793)

BEYOND a doubt, citizens, the hopes of your commissioners will
not be deceived. Yes, your enemies, the enemies of lib-
erty shall be exterminated, for your efforts shall be relent-
less. You are worthy the dignity of regulating and controlling
the nation's energy. Your commissioners, disseminated in all
parts of the Republic, will repeat to Frenchmen that the great
quarrel between despotism and liberty shall soon terminate. The
people of France shall be avenged; it becomes us then to put
the political world in harmony, to make laws in accord with such
harmony. But before we too deeply entertain these grander ob-
jects, I shall ask you to make a declaration of a principle too
long ignored; to abolish a baneful error, to destroy the tyranny
of wealth upon misery.

If the measures I propose be adopted, then Pitt, the Breteuil
of English diplomacy, and Burke, the Abbe Maury of the British
Parliament, who are impelling the English people to-day against
liberty, may be touched.

What do you ask ? You would have every Frenchman armed
in the common defense. And yet there is a class of men sullied
by no crime, who have stout arms, but no liberty. They are the
unfortunates detained for debt. It is a shame for humanity, it is
against all philosophy, that a man in receiving money can pawn
his person as security. I can readily prove that this principle is
favorable to cupidity, since experience proves that the lender
takes no pecuniary security, since he has the disposition of the
body of his debtor. But of what importance are these mercantile
considerations ? They should not influence a great nation. Prin-
ciples are eternal, and no Frenchman can be rightly deprived of
his liberty unless he has forfeited it to society. The possessing
and owning class need not be alarmed. Doubtless, some indi-
viduals go to extremes, but the nation, always just, will respect
all the proprieties. Respect misery, and misery will respect
opulence. [Applause.] Never wrong the unfortunate, and the un-
forttmate, who have more soul than the rich, will remain guilt-
less. [Loud applause.]

GEORGE JACQUES DANTON

I ask that this National Convention declare that every French
citizen imprisoned for debt shall be liberated, because such im-
prisonment is contrary' to moral health, contrary to the rights of
man, and to the true principles of liberty.

EDUCATION, FREE AND COMPULSORY
(From a Speech Delivered in the Convention, August I3th, 1793)
Citizens: —

AFTER having given liberty to France; after having vanquished
her enemies, there can be no honor greater than to prepare
for future generations an education in keeping with that
liberty. This is the object which Lepeletier proposes: that all
that is good for society shall be adopted by those who live under
its social contract. ... It has been said that paternal affec-
tion opposes the execution of such plans. Certainly we must
respect natural rights even in their perversion. But even if we
do not fully sustain compulsory schooling, we must not deprive
the children of the poor of an education.

The greatest objection has been that of finding the means;
but I have already said there is no real extravagance where the
good result to the public is so great, and I add the principle that
the child of the poor can be taught at the expense of the super-
fluities of the scandalous fortunes erected among us. It is to
you who are celebrated among our Republicans that I appeal;
bring to this subject the fire of your imagination, the energy of
your character. It is the people who must endow national edu-
cation.

When you commence to sow this seed of education in the
vast field of the Republic, you must not count the expense of
reaping the harvest. After bread, education is the first need of
a people. [Applause.] I ask that the question be submitted,
that there be founded at the expense of the nation establish-
ments where each citizen can have the right to send his children
for free public instruction. It is to the monks — it is to the age
of Louis XIV., when men were great by their acquirements, that
we owe the age of philosophy, that is to say, of reason, brought to
the knowledge of the people. To the Jesuits, lost by their politi-
cal ambitions, we owe an impetus in education evoking our ad-
miration. But the Republic has been in the souls of our people,

jg^jo GEORGE JACQUES DANTON

twenty years ahead of its proclamation. Corneille wrote dedica-
tions to Montauron, but Corneille made the 'Cid,' 'Cinna'; Cor-
neille spoke like a Roman, and he who said : (< For being more
than a king you think you are something,* was a true Repub-
lican.

Now for public instruction; everything shrinks in domestic
teaching, everything enlarges and ennobles in public communal
instruction. A mistake is made in presenting a tableau of pa-
ternal affections. I, too, am a father, and more so than the
aristocrats who oppose public education, for they are never sure
of their paternities. [Laughter.] When I consider my rights
relatively to the general good I feel elevated; my son is not
mine. He belongs to the Republic. Let her dictate his duties
that he can best serve her. It has been said it is repugnant
to the heart of our peasantry to make such sacrifice of their
children. Well, do not constrain them too much. Let there be
classes, if necessary, that only meet on the Sabbath. Begin the
system by a gradual adaptation to the manners of the people.
If you expect the State to make an instant and absolute regen-
eration, you will never get public instruction. It is necessary
that each man develop the moral means and methods he received
from nature. Have for them all communal houses and faculties
for instruction, and do not stop at any secondary considerations.
The rich man will pay, and will lose nothing if he will profit for
the instruction of his son.

I ask, then, that under suitable and necessary modifications
you decree the erection of national establishments where child-
ren can be instructed, fed, and lodged gratuitously, and the cit-
izens who desire to retain their children at home can send them
there for instruction.

Convention, December i2th, 1793. — It is a proper time to
establish the principle which seems misunderstood, that the youth
belong to the Republic before they belong to their parents. No
one more than myself respects nature, but of what avail the rea-
soning of the individual against the reason of the nation ? In
the national schools the child will suck the milk of Republican-
ism. The Republic is one and indivisible. Public instruction
produces such a centre of unity. To none, then, can we accord
the privilege of isolation from such benefits.

GEORGE JACQUES D ANTON jg-,

FREEDOM OF WORSHIP
(Delivered in the Convention, April i8th, 1793)

WE HAVE appeared divided in counsel, but the instant we seek
the good of mankind we are in accord. Vergniaud has told
us grand and immortal truths. The Constitutional As-
sembly, embarrassed by a king, by the prejudices which still
enchain the nation, and by deep-rooted intolerance, has not up-
rooted accepted principles, but has done much for liberty in
consecrating the doctrine of tolerance. To-day the ground of
liberty is prepared and we owe to the French people a govern-
ment founded on bases pure and eternal! Yes! we shall say to
them: Frenchmen you have the right to adore the divinity you
deem entitled to your worship : <( The liberty of worship, which it
is the object of law to establish, means only the right of individ-
uals to assemble to render in their own way homage to the Deity."
Such a form of liberty is enforcible only by legal regulations and
che police, but you do not wish to insert regulating laws in your
declaration of rights. The right of freedom of worship, a sacred
right, will be protected by laws in harmony with its principles.
We will have only to guarantee these rights. Human reason
cannot retrograde; we have advanced too far for the people ever
to believe they are not absolutely free in religious thought, merely
because you have failed to engrave the principle of this liberty
on the table of your laws. If superstition still seem to inhere
in the movements of the Republic, it is because our political ene-
mies always employ it. But look! everywhere the people, freed
from malevolent espionage, recognize that any one assuming to
interpose between them and their God is an impostor.

« SQUEEZING THE SPONGE »
(On Taxing the Rich — Delivered in the Convention, April 27th, 1793)

You have decreed * honorable mention w of what has been done
for the public benefit by the Department De L' He vault. In
this decree you authorize the whole Republic to adopt the
same measures, for your decree ratifies all the acts which have
just been brought to your knowledge.

,632 GEORGE JACQUES D ANTON

If everywhere the same measures be taken, the Republic is
saved. No more shall we treat as agitators and anarchists the
ardent friends of liberty who set the nation in motion, but we
shall say : (< Honor to the agitators who turn the vigor of the
people against its enemies ! w When the Temple of Liberty shall
be reared, the people will know how to decorate it. Rather
perish France than to return to our hard slavery. Let it not
be believed we shall become barbarians after we shall have
founded liberty. We shall embellish France until the despots
shall envy us; but while the ship of State is in the stress of
storm, beaten by the tempest, that which belongs to each, be-
longs to all.

No longer are Agrarian Laws spoken of! The people are
wiser than their calumniators assumed, and the people in mass
have much more sense than many of those who deem them-
selves great men. In a people we can no more count the great
men than we can count the giant trees in the vast forest. It
was believed that the people wanted the Agrarian Law, and
this may throw suspicion on the measures adopted by the De-
partment De L'Hevault. It will be said of them: "They taxed
the rich*; but, citizens, to tax the rich is to serve them. It is
rather a veritable advantage for them than any considerable
sacrifice; and the greater the sacrifice, the greater the usufruct,
for the greater is the guarantee to the foundation of property
against the invasion of its enemies. It is an appeal to every
man, according to his means, to save the Republic. The appeal
is just. What the Department De L'Hevault has done, Paris
and all France will do. See what resources France will procure.
Paris has a luxury and wealth which is considerable. Well, by
decree, this sponge will be squeezed! And with singular satis-
faction it will be found that the people will conduct their revo-
lution at the expense of their internal enemies. These enemies
themselves will learn the price of liberty and will desire to
possess it, when they will recognize that it has preserved for
them their possessions.

Paris in making an appeal to capitalists will furnish her con-
tingent, which will afford means to suppress the troubles in La
Vendee; for, at any sacrifice, these troubles must be suppressed.
On this alone depends your external tranquillity. Already, the
Departments of the north have informed the combined despots
that your territory cannot be divided; and soon you will prob-

GEORGE JACQUES DANTON

ably learn of the dissolution of this formidable league of kings.
For in uniting against you, they have not forgotten their an-
cient hatreds and respective pretensions; and if the Executive
Council had had a little more latitude, the league might be al-
ready completely dissolved.

Paris, then, must be directed against La Vendee. All the men
needed in this city to form a reserve camp should be sent at
once to La Vende'e. These measures once taken, the rebels will
disperse, and, like the Austrians, will commence to kill each
other. If the flames of this civil discord be extinguished, they
will ask of us peace!
v — 103

1634

DAVID DAVIS

(1815-1886)

DAVIS, celebrated for his independent position during a
period of strong partisanship, was born in Cecil County,
Maryland, March pth, 1815, but he removed to Illinois at an
age so early that, historically, he is completely identified with that
State. He was a Republican, strongly supporting all the measures of
that party for the restoration of the Union and the suppression of
resistance to Federal authority, but after the war ended, without leav-
ing the party, he asserted his right to use his individual judgment
regardless of caucuses or of what he considered merely partisan poli-
cies. This attitude, well represented in his speech of April 22d, 1879,
had a great influence on the politics of his time. He is supposed to
have been the original type of the (< Statesman on the Fence, w but
the jest of partisan paragraphers did not impair his usefulness or
make him a less respectable figure, historically. He was Associate-
Justice of the United States Supreme Court from 1862 to 1877;
United States Senator from Illinois from 1877 to 1883, and from 1881
to 1883 acting Vice-President of the United States. He died at
Bloomington, Illinois, June 26th, 1886.

ON APPEAL FROM THE CAUCUS

(From the Speech on Freedom of Elections, Delivered in the United States

Senate, April 22d, 1879)
Mr. President: —

THE caucus is an important factor in American politics, and
both the great parties of the country employ its agency.
This is done on the theory that party action is most easily
perfected by this method. I do not complain of the mode adopted
to reach results, but as I have been for many years viewing
public affairs from an independent standpoint, it does not help
me to decide any question that may come before the Senate.
Although usually ^preferring to give a silent vote, I cannot suffer
this measure to be\ passed on without saying something on the
subject.

DAVID DAVIS

The heat that has been manifested on the occasion of this
debate has surprised me, if anything can surprise me in politics.
A stranger unaccustomed to our modes of debate would suppose
that the Union were in danger, and that the old questions, pas-
sions, prejudices, and purposes which it had been thought were
laid aside forever were again revived. And this, too, fourteen
years after the rebellion was conquered, and when there is no
complaint from any quarter that the Federal compact presses too
hard upon one section at the expense of another, and when the
Federal Government is obeyed throughout the entire South.

There does not seem to be the least ground for the excite-
ment and bitterness that have characterized the discussions in
Congress at this session, and I should be amazed were it not
that the record of all parties proves that majorities invariably
commit legislative wrongs and minorities invariably protest against
them. If it be true as charged that the success of one of the
great parties of the country means revolution and ruin to consti-
tutional liberty, of what value would be the securities of the
Government, or, indeed, any other species of prosperty ? In the
nature of things, if a revolution were impending or there were any
danger apprehended to free government or popular liberty, the
Government would not be able to sell bonds at four per cent.
interest, nor the stock market in New York to maintain its pres-
ent high rate.

This charge, Mr. President, is mere fiction and has no foun-
dation to rest on; but it produces infinite mischief and tends to
demoralize the country and every material interest in it, alarms
the thoughtless and timid, unsettles business and values, and
produces a state of unrest in every community. It may succeed
in winning elections, but it cannot restore prosperity. That great
object can never be accomplished through a continuance of sec-
tional strife and the violence that accompanies it, nor do I be-
lieve the people are in the mood for this kind of politics. They
have had more than five years of harsh experience and they
want to find some mode of relief from thei* present sufferings
and impoverished condition. And they will honor the statesman
who contributes to the stock of knowledge on this subject rather
than the political leader who will not let the past alone.

I have no personal concern, Mr. President, in the rise and
fall of parties, but I am deeply solicitous that the affairs of
Government shall be so administered that labor seeking employ-

1636

DAVID DAVIS

ment can obtain it; that all industrial pursuits will be suitably
rewarded, and that heart be given to the people, North and
South, to work out of their present embarrassments. We are
one people, of the same blood and with the same destiny, and
unity of feeling is essential to lift us out of the mire and to help
us on the road to prosperity.

The different parts of our common country are so . intimately
connected in trade and commerce that, as a general rule, what-
ever injuriously affects one part has a corresponding effect on
the other, and whatever benefits the one benefits the other.

It is, Mr. President, in my judgment, the imperative duty of
the hour, instead of turning the attention of the people back into
history with its animosities, to direct it to the troubled business
interests of the country and the way to relieve them.

With the past buried and discussions on living issues, the
people would soon regain confidence, which is essential in any
plan for relieving the present hard times. It may be that such
a course would affect the fortunes of parties — for both parties
in Congress on any question of practical legislation fall to pieces
— but it would have the most beneficial effect upon the fortunes
of the country.

Without intending to reflect upon the patriotism of either
party, it does appear to me that the speeches on the pending
bill do not represent the wishes or opinions of the masses of the
people of either section. Experience has taught them that legiti-
mate business principles which lead to wealth and social happi-
ness require a cessation from agitation on past subjects, and that
sound policy dictates the cultivation of peace and good-will be-
tween the sections. The country, Mr. President, cannot be pros-
perous so long as the old conflict between the North and South
is used at each recurring presidential election as an instrument-
ality of party success, and the statesman who shall rise equal to
the occasion, and put it at rest, will receive the gratitude of a
suffering people.

The bill before us is for the support of the Army for the
ensiling fiscal year. It is attacked because the sixth section alters
two provisions of the Revised Statutes. Section 2002 of these
statutes reads as follows: —

(<No military or naval officer, or other person engaged in the civil,
military, or naval service of the United States, shall order, bring,
keep, or have under his authority or control any troops or armed

DAVID DAVIS

men at the place where any general or special election is held in
any State, unless it be necessary to repel the armed enemies of the
United States, or to keep the peace at the polls."

And Section 5528 is in these words: —

"Every officer of the Army or Navy, or other person in the civil,
military, or naval service of the United States who orders, brings,
keeps, or has under his authority or control any troops or armed
men at any place where a general or special election is held in any
State, unless such force be necessary to repel armed enemies of the
United States or to keep the peace at the polls, shall be fined not
more than $5,000, and suffer imprisonment at hard labor not less
than three months nor more than five years. M

These sections, though widely separated in the Revised Stat-
utes, are parts of a general law passed on the twenty-fifth of
February, 1865, <(to prevent officers of the Army and Navy and
other persons engaged in the service from interfering in elec-
tions in the States." (Statutes at Large, vol. xiii., page 437.)

The first section denounced the use of troops at elections ex-
cept in two specified cases, and the second section provided the
penalties for disobedience. The two excepted cases are when
the troops were necessary to repel the armed enemies of the
United States or to keep peace at the polls. The sixth section
of the Appropriation Bill proposes to strike from both sections
the words (< or to keep the peace at the polls, w and nothing more,
so that the Army cannot be used hereafter at elections for any
purpose. As an abstract proposition, can there be any rational
objection to this ? Ought the Army to be used at the polls when
there has been profound peace for more than a decade ? Does
any one believe that such a law would ever have received the
approval of the American Congress if it had been brought for-
ward in a time of peace ? It was passed when a formidable civil
war was in progress, taxing to the utmost the resources of the
country.

In the opinion of the patriots of that day the state of feeling
in certain parts of the country was of such a character as to en-
danger peaceful elections while the war lasted, unless a military
force was kept in readiness for any outbreak of popular commo-
tion. This was the conviction that prompted the legislation, but
I venture to say no one of the eminent men who voted for it

i638

DAVID DAVIS

intended or expected that it would remain a part of the perma-
nent law of the land. They were too well read in the lessons of
history and the traditions of the Anglo-Saxon race to believe that
a free people would tolerate — except on great emergencies like
a war waged for the maintenance of the Union — the interfer-
ence of the military in civic concerns. And they were men of
principle and did not wish it to be otherwise.

It is no new thing in time of peace to repeal a law passed in
time of war. Indeed, no wise statesman will hesitate to do it if
the law be unsuitable to the changed condition of things. It is
a part of the very nature of every man of our race to rebel
against anything which interferes with the freedom of elections,
and the days of the Republic are numbered if the people ever
consent to place the ballot box under the protection of the bay-
onet.

But, Mr. President, this consent will never be obtained until
they have forgotten the principles of constitutional liberty and
the precedents set by the Commons of England. These prece-
dents I refrain from referring to at length, but the preamble to
an act passed in the time of George II. (1735), forbidding the
presence of troops at elections, is so appropriate that I beg leave
to read it: —

* WHEREAS, by the ancient common law of this land all elections
ought to be free ; and whereas by an act passed in the third year of
the reign of King Edward I., of famous memory, it is commanded,
upon great forfeiture, that no man, by force of arms, nor by malice
or menacing, shall disturb any to make free election; and foras-
much as the freedom of elections of Members to serve in Parliament
is of the utmost consequence to the preservation of the rights and
liberties of this kingdom; and whereas it has been the usage and
practice to cause any regiment, troop, or company, or any number of
soldiers which hath been quartered in any city, borough, town or
place where any election of Members to serve in Parliament hath
been appointed to be made, to remove and continue out of the same
during the time of such election, except in such particular cases as
are hereinafter specified.* — < Pickering's Statutes,' vol. xvi.

And the ( History of Parliament* contains this incident: —

"The military having been called in to quell an alleged riot at
Westminster election in 1741, it was resolved, December 22d, (that
the presence of a regular body of armed soldiers at an election of

DAVID DAVIS

Members to serve in Parliament is a high infringement of the lib-
erties of the subject, a manifest violation of the freedom of elections,
and an open defiance of the laws and constitution of this kingdom.'
The persons concerned in this having been ordered to attend the
House, received, on their knees, a very severe reprimand from the
speaker. w — Parliament History,* vol. ix., page 326.

Can it be possible that a principle of common law — the right
of the people to have an election free from the presence of
troops — so dear to Englishmen one hundred years ago, is not
equally dear to their descendants at the present day ?

Mr. President, it will require some one now living to write
accurately the history of these times, for the future historian will
be slow to believe that there was any basis on which to rest
such an inquiry in the Congress of the United States during the
latter part of the nineteenth century. Why, then, should not the
law of 1865 be altered in the manner proposed by this bill ?

It is said that Mr. Lincoln signed it, and the inference is that
it would reflect on his memory to change it. To say the least,
this is a pretty strong presumption from such a predicate. No
man loved Mr. Lincoln better or honors his memory more than
I do, nor had any one greater opportunities to learn the consti-
tution of his mind and character and his habits of thought. He
was large-hearted, wiser than those associated with him, full of
sympathy for struggling humanity, without malice, with charity
for erring man, loving his whole country with a deep devotion,
and intensely anxious to save it. Believing as I do that he was
raised up by Providence for the great crisis of the War of the
Rebellion, I have equal belief, had he lived, we would have been
spared much of the strife of these latter days, and that we now
would be on the highroad to prosperity. Such a man, hating all
forms of oppression, and deeply imbued with the principle that
induced the men of 1776 to resist the stamp tax, would never
have willingly intrusted power to any one, unless war was fla-
grant, to send troops to oversee an election.

Why, then, I repeat, should not the proposed measure pass ?
There is no rebellion, nor any threatened, nor any domestic up-
roar anywhere. The Union is cemented by the blood that was
shed in defense of its integrity; the laws are obeyed North and
South, East and West, and our only real differences relate to the
administration of the internal affairs of the Government. By the
constitution of the human mind, there will of necessity be diverse

1640

DAVID DAVIS

opinions among the people on the best way to manage their in-
ternal affairs, and Congress meets periodically to legislate for the
people and to represent their views on the questions dividing
them. But surely these differences, be they great or small, afford
no justification for a departure from any of the principles that
underlie republican government. If they do, the charter of our
liberties will soon be frittered away. . . .

1641

HENRY WINTER DAVIS
(1817-1865)

|s A representative of Maryland who had opposed forcing is-
sues on the abolition of slavery, Henry Winter Davis be-
came one of the most prominent figures in national politics
when in February, 1861, President Buchanan being still in office, he
denounced the administration and demanded the use of any amount
of force necessary to preserve (<the unity of territory we have la-
bored through three generations and spent millions to create and
establish. M This argument and others related to it, as he summar-
ized them, were decisive against the idea of allowing the "erring
sisters'* to go in peace. The stand thus taken by Mr. Davis was
maintained throughout the war. He reported the first "plan of re-
construction," proposed by the Republicans in 1864, and in his speech
on that occasion summarized in a few sentences more clearly per-
haps than they are presented elsewhere, the constitutional difficulties
which were overcome in adopting the (< Civil War amendments. " He
was born at Annapolis, August i6th, 1817, and died at Baltimore,
December 3oth, 1865. His biographers sometimes represent that at
his first election to Congress in 1854 he was already a Republican,
but in 1857 he made a speech denouncing that party as sectional,
and declaring the (< American » party to be the only really national
party in existence. In 1859, when he voted for the Republican can-
didate for Speaker of the House of Representatives, the Maryland
legislature adopted resolutions declaring that he had forfeited the
confidence of the people. He replied in a speech on the floor of
the House that the Maryland legislature could take their message
back to their masters, for only to their masters the people was
he responsible. He was re-elected to the House of Representatives
as a Republican in 1862 and served until his death.

1642

HENRY WINTER DAVIS

REASONS FOR REFUSING TO PART COMPANY WITH THE SOUTH

(From a Speech on the State of the Union, Delivered in the House of

Representatives, February yth, 1861)
Mr. Speaker: —

WE ARE at the end of the insane revel of partisan license,
which, for thirty years, has, in the United States, worn
the mask of government. We are about to close the
masquerade by the dance of death. The nations of the world
look anxiously to see if the people, ere they tread that measure,
will come to themselves.

Yet in the early youth of our national life we are already
exhausted by premature excesses. The corruption of our politi-
cal maxims has relaxed the tone of public morals and degraded
the public authorities from the terror to the accomplices of evil-
doers. Platforms for fools — plunder for thieves — offices for serv-
ice— power for ambition — unity in these essentials — diversity in
the immaterial matters of policy and legislation — charity for
every frailty — the voice of the people is the voice of God —
these maxims have sunk into the public mind, have presided at
the administration of public affairs, have almost effaced the very
idea of public duty. The Government under their disastrous in-
fluence has gradually ceased to fertilize the fields of domestic
and useful legislation, and pours itself, like an impetuous torrent,
along the barren ravine of party and sectional strife. It has
been shorn of every prerogative that wore the austere aspect of
authority and power.

The President, no longer preceded by the fasces and the ax,
— the emblems of supreme authority, — greets every popular
clamor with wreathed smiles and gracious condescension, is de-
graded to preside in the palace of the nation over the distribu-
tion of spoils among wrangling victors, dedicates his great powers
to forge or find arms to perpetuate partisan warfare at the ex-
pense of the public peace. The original ideas of the Constitu-
tion have faded from men's minds. That the United States is a
government entitled to respect and command; that the Constitu-
tion furnishes a remedy for every grievance and a mode of
redress for every wrong; that the States are limited within their
spheres, are charged with no duties to each other, and bear no
relation to the other States excepting through their common

HENRY WINTER DAVIS

head, the Government of the United States; that those in author-
ity alone are charged with power to repress public disorder, and
compose the public discontents, restrain the conduct of the peo-
ple and of the States within the barriers of the Constitution —
these salutary principles have faded from the popular heart with
the great interests which the Government is charged to protect,
and has gradually allowed to escape from its grasp. Congress
has ceased to regulate commerce, to protect domestic industry,
to encourage our commercial marine, to regulate the currency, to
promote internal commerce by internal improvements — almost
every power useful to the people in its exercise has been denied
and abandoned, or so limited in its exercise as to be useless; its
whole activity has been dedicated to expansion abroad and ac-
quiring and retaining power at home, till men have forgotten
that the Union is a blessing, and that they owe to the United
States allegiance paramount to that to their respective States.

The consequence of this demoralization is that States, with-
out regard to the Federal Government, assume to stand face to
face and wage their own quarrels, to adjust their own difficulties,
to impute to each other every wrong, to insist that individual
States shall remedy every grievance, and they denounce failure
to do so as cause of civil war between the States; and as if the
Constitution were silent and dead, and the power of the Union
utterly inadequate to keep the peace between them, unconstitu-
tional commissioners flit from State to State, or assemble at the
national capital to counsel peace or instigate war. Sir, these are
the causes which lie at the bottom of the present dangers.
These causes, which have rendered them possible and made them
serious, must be removed before they can ever be permanently
cured. They shake the fabric of our national Government. It
is to this fearful demoralization of the Government and the peo-
ple that we must ascribe the disastrous defections which now
perplex us with the fear of change in all that constituted our
greatness. The operation of the Government has been with-
drawn from the great public interests, in order that compet-
ing parties might not be embarrassed in the struggle for power
by diversities of opinion upon questions of policy; and the pub-
lic mind, in that struggle, has been exclusively turned on the
slavery question, which no interest required to be touched by
any department of this Government. On that subject there are
widely marked diversities of opinion and interest in the different

1 644

HENRY WINTER DAVIS

portions of the Confederacy, with few mediating influences to
soften the collision. In the struggle for party power, the two
great regions of the country have been brought face to face upon
this most dangerous of all subjects of agitation. The authority
of the Government was relaxed just when its power was about
to be assailed; and the people, emancipated from every control,
and their passions inflamed by the fierce struggle for the presi-
dency, were the easy prey of revolutionary audacity.

Within two months after a formal, peaceful, regular election
of the Chief Magistrate of the United States, in which the whole
body of the people of every State competed with zeal for the
prize, without any new event intervening, without any new griev-
ances alleged, without any new menaces having been made, we
have seen, in the short course of one month, a small portion of
the population of six States transcend the bounds at a single
leap at once of the State and the national constitutions; usurp the
extraordinary prerogative of repealing the supreme law of the
land ; exclude the great mass of their fellow-citizens from the pro-
tection of the Constitution; declare themselves emancipated from
the obligations which the Constitution pronounces to be supreme
over them and over their laws; arrogate to themselves all the
prerogatives of independent power; rescind the acts of cession of
the public property; occupy the public offices; seize the fortresses
of the United States confided to the faith of the people among
whom they were placed; embezzle the public arms concentrated
there for the defense of the United States; array thousands of
men in arms against the United States; and actually wage war
on the Union by besieging two of their fortresses and firing on
a vessel bearing, under the flag of the United States, reinforce-
ments and provisions to one of them. The very boundaries of
right and wrong seem obliterated when we see a cabinet minis-
ter engaged for months in deliberately changing the distribu-
tion of public arms to places in the hands of those about to
resist the public authority, so as to place within their grasp
means of waging war against the United States greater than
they ever used against a foreign foe; and another cabinet min-
ister, still holding his commission under the authority of the
United States, still a confidential adviser of the President, still
bound by his oath to support the Constitution of the United
States, himself a commissioner from his own State to another of
the United States, for the purpose of organizing and extending

HENRY WINTER DAVIS

1645

another part of the same great scheme of rebellion; and the
doom of the Republic seems sealed when the President, sur-
rounded by such ministers, permits, without rebuke, the Govern-
ment to be betrayed, neglects the solemn warning of the first
soldier of the age, till almost every fort is a prey to domestic
treason, and accepts assurances of peace in his time at the ex-
pense of leaving the national honor unguarded. His message
gives aid and comfort to the enemies of the Union, by avowing
his inability to maintain its integrity; and, paralyzed and stupefied,
he stands amid the crash of the falling Republic, still muttering,
<( Not in my time, not in my time ; after me the deluge ! *

Sir, history, by her prophet Tacitus, has drawn his character
for posterity — Major private visus dum privatus futf, et consensu
omnium capax imperil nisi imperasset. Yes, sir, " nisi imperasset "
James Buchanan might have passed to the grave as one of the
men of the Republic equal to every station he filled and not in-
competent for the highest. The acquisition of supreme power
has revealed his incapacity and crowns him with the unenviable
honor of the chief destroyer of his country's greatness.

We have, Mr. Speaker, this day to deal, in a great measure,
with the consequences of his incapacity. Persons usurping power
in six or seven States have thrown off their allegiance to the
United States. It was fondly hoped that it was only temporary,
possibly a desperate contrivance to restore the chief actors to
power; but we are now authoritatively informed, by the response
of South Carolina to the kindly messenger from Virginia, that
their position is permanently fixed; that they desire to have, and
will have, no further political connection with the United States;
and a distinguished gentleman, until within one month a member
of the Senate of the United States, recently elected president of
the revolutionary convention at Montgomery, has informed us in
his inaugural speech that it is their purpose finally to sever their
connection with the United States and to take all the conse-
quences of organizing an independent republic.

Mr. Speaker, we are driven to one of two alternatives; we
must recognize what we have been told more than once upon
this floor is an accomplished fact — the independence of the re-
bellious States — or we must refuse to acknowledge it, and accept
all the responsibilities that attach to that refusal. Recognize
them! Abandon the Gulf and coast of Mexico; surrender
the forts of the United States; yield the privilege of free com-

1646

HENRY WINTER DAVIS

merce and free intercourse; strike down the guarantees of the
Constitution for our fellow-citizens in all that wide region; create
a thousand miles of interior frontier to be furnished with in-
ternal customhouses, and armed with internal forts, themselves
to be a prey to the next caprice of State sovereignty; organize a
vast standing army, ready at a moment's warning to resist
aggression; create upon our southern boundary a perpetual foot-
hold for foreign powers, whenever caprice, ambition, or hostility
may see fit to invite the despot of France or the aggressive
power of England to attack us upon our undefended frontier;
sever that unity of territory which we have spent millions, and
labored through three generations, to create and establish; pull
down the flag of the United States and take a lower station
among the nations of the earth; abandon the high prerogative of
leading the march of freedom, the hope of struggling national-
ities, the terror of frowning tyrants, the boast of the world, the
light of liberty — to become the sport and prey of despots whose
thrones we consolidate by our fall — to be greeted by Mexico
with the salutation : w Art thou also become weak as we ? art
thou become like unto us.?w This is recognition.

Refuse to recognize! We must not coerce a State in the
peaceful process of secession. We must not coerce a State en-
gaged in the peaceful process of firing into a United States ves-
sel, to prevent the reinforcement of a United States fort. We
must not coerce States which, without any declaration of war, or
any act of hostility of any kind, have united, as have Mississippi,
Florida, and Louisiana, their joint forces to seize a public fortress.
We must not coerce a State which has planted cannon upon its
shores to prevent the free navigation of the Mississippi. We
must not coerce a State which has robbed the United States
Treasury. This is peaceful secession!

Mr. Speaker, I do not design to quarrel with gentlemen about
words. I do not wish to say one word which will exasperate
the already too much inflamed state of the public mind; but I
say that the Constitution of the United States and the laws made
in pursuance thereof must be enforced ; and they who stand
across the path of that enforcement must either destroy the
power of the United States or it will destroy them.

HENRY WINTER DAVIS

1647

CONSTITUTIONAL DIFFICULTIES OF RECONSTRUCTION
(From a Speech in the House of Representatives, March zad, 1864)

Mr. Speaker: —

THE bill which I am directed by the committee on the rebel-
lious States to report is one which provides for the resto-
ration of civil government in States whose governments
have been overthrown. It prescribes such conditions as will se-
cure not only civil government to the people of the rebellious
States, but will also secure to the people of the United States
permanent peace after the suppression of the rebellion. The bill
challenges the support of all who consider slavery the cause of
the rebellion. . . . When military opposition shall have been
suppressed, not merely paralyzed, driven into a corner, pushed
back, but gone, the horrid vision of civil war vanished from the
South, then call upon the people to reorganize in their own way,
subject to the conditions that we think essential to our permanent
peace, and to prevent the revival hereafter of the rebellion —
a republican government in the form that the people of the
United States can agree to.

Now, for that purpose there are three modes indicated. One
is to remove the cause of the war by an alteration of the Con-
stitution of the United States, prohibiting slavery everywhere
within its limits. That, sir, goes to the root of the matter, and
should consecrate the nation's triumph. But there are thirty-four
States; three-fourths of them would be twenty-six. I believe
there are twenty-five States represented in this Congress; so that
we on that basis cannot change the Constitution. It is, therefore,
a condition precedent in that view of the case that more States
shall have governments organized within them. . . .

The next plan is that inaugurated by the President of the
United States in the proclamation of the eighth of December,
called the Amnesty Proclamation. That proposes no guardianship
of the United States over the reorganization of the governments,
no law to prescribe who shall vote, no civil functionaries to see
that the law is faithfully executed, no supervising authority to
control and judge of the election. But if in any manner by
the toleration of martial law, lately proclaimed the fundamental
law, under the dictation of any military authority, or under the
prescription of a provost marshal, something in the form of a

1648

HENRY WINTER DAVIS

government shall be presented, represented to rest on the votes
of one-tenth of the population, the President will recognize that,
provided it does not contravene the proclamation of freedom and
the laws of Congress; and to secure that an oath is exacted.
There is no guaranty of law to watch over the organization of
that government. It may be recognized by the military power,
and not recognized by the civil power, so that it would have a
doubtful existence, half civil and half military, neither a tempo-
rary government by law of Congress nor a State government,
something as unknown to the Constitution as the rebel govern-
ment that refuses to recognize it. The only prescription is that
it shall not contravene the provisions of the proclamation. Sir,
if that proclamation be valid, then we are relieved from all
trouble on that score. But if that proclamation be not valid,
then the oath to support it is without legal sanction, for the
President can ask no man to bind himself by an oath to support
an unfounded proclamation or an unconstitutional law even for a
moment, still less after it shall have been declared void by the
Supreme Court of the United States.

By the bill we propose to preclude the judicial question by
the solution of a political question. How so ? By the paramount
power of Congress to reorganize governments in those States, to
impose such conditions as it thinks necessary to secure the per-
manence of republican government, to refuse to recognize any
governments there which do not prohibit slavery forever. Aye,
gentlemen, take the responsibility to say in the face of those
who clamor for the speedy recognition of governments tolerating
slavery, that the safety of the people of the United States is the
supreme law; that their will is the supreme rule of law, and that
we are authorized to pronounce their will on this subject. They
take the responsibility to say that we will revise the judgments of
our ancestors; that we have experience written in blood which they
had not; that we find now what they darkly doubted, that slavery
is really radically inconsistent with the permanence of republican
governments; and that being charged by the supreme law of the
land on our conscience and judgment to guarantee, that is to
continue, maintain, and enforce, if it exist, to institute and restore,
when overthrown, republican government throughout the broad
limits of the Republic, we will weed out every element of their
policy which we think incompatible with its permanence and en-
durance. The purpose of the bill is to preclude the judicial

HENRY WINTER DAVIS

1649

question of the validity and effect of the President's proclamation
by the decision of the political authority in reorganizing the
State governments. It makes the rule of decision the provisions
of the State constitution, which, when recognized by Congress,
can be questioned in no court; and i.t adds to the authority of
the proclamation the sanction of Congress. If gentlemen say
that the Constitution does not bear that construction, we will go
before the people of the United States on that question, and by
their judgment we will abide,
v— 104

1650

JEFFERSON DAVIS

(1808-1889)

Js A speaker, Jefferson Davis has a military directness of style
in keeping with the West Point education which seems to
have influenced his character more radically than any other
single factor in its formation. He never hesitates for words to ex-
press his ideas, nor does he delay their flow to seek for ornament.
His farewell to the Senate in 1861 and his inaugural as President of
the Southern Confederacy have an unadorned simplicity which shows
his consciousness of the importance of both occasions and his de-
termination not to allow superfluous trope or forced metaphor to
compromise him in the eyes of posterity. His speech against Clay
in 1850, though less studied in its severity, shows the same charac-
teristics. In less than half a dozen lines in this speech, Mr. Davis
announced the end of the era of compromise and put himself at
the head of those at the South who were in favor of meeting sec-
tional issues without further postponement.

He was born in Christian County, Kentucky, June 3d, 1808. His
family which removed to Mississippi in his infancy, sent him back
to Transylvania University in Kentucky to be educated, but trans-
ferred him from it to West Point, where he graduated in 1828.
From his graduation until 1835, he served in the Regular Army, re-
signing as a lieutenant of dragoons in that year to begin life on
a plantation in Mississippi. He was active in the politics of his
State from the period of his resignation from the army until the
organization of the Confederacy. Elected to Congress in 1844, he
resigned to take part in the Mexican War. Wounded at the battle
of Buena Vista where he greatly distinguished himself, he was sent,
while still on crutches, to represent Mississippi in the Senate. Serv-
ing in the Senate from 1847 to 1851, he was Secretary of War in
the Cabinet of President Pierce from 1853 to 1857, and United States
Senator a second time from 1857 to 1861. When he left the Senate
after the secession of Mississippi, he was chosen President of the
Confederacy without effort on his part to secure the place. Indeed,
his severe ideas of personal dignity would never have allowed him
to intrigue for any office. After the collapse of the Confederacy,
he was confined for two years in Fortress Monroe, but was released
without being brought to trial on the indictment for treason which

JEFFERSON DAVIS !£.,

had been found against him. He died in New Orleans, December
6th, 1889. At the South the idea that he was individually or dis-
tinctively responsible for the Civil War, or for the action taken by
the Southern States, has never gained acceptance. He has been
regarded merely as a representative man, one of many such, obey-
ing in public life the will of his constituency as far as it accorded
with his own sense of propriety. This was his own theory of
his position in history. From 1850 to 1860 in public and private
he repeatedly asserted his devotion to the Union, coupling such
assertions with warnings of the growing excitement among his con-
stituents and with repeated enunciations of his determination to be
governed by their will and their interests as a consideration para-
mount to all others. At the South from 1861 to 1865, he was often
and hotly attacked, but from the surrender at Appomattox until
his death, his friends and his enemies among ex-Confederates ac-
cepted him as the historical representative of the " Lost Cause w and
defended him against all attack. While he lacked the faculty of in-
spiring the enthusiastic devotion which was a spontaneous tribute
to such leaders as Robert E. Lee, he had the high regard of all
who knew him intimately and the respect of all who sympathized
with his views. Mr. Reagan, of Texas, a member of his Cabinet,
called him <(the most devout Christian I ever knew and the most
self-sacrificing of men.* W. V. B.

ANNOUNCING THE SECESSION OF MISSISSIPPI
(Delivered on Retiring from the United States Senate, January ?ist, 1861)

I RISE, Mr. President, for the purpose of announcing to the
Senate that I have satisfactory evidence that the State of

Mississippi, by a solemn ordinance of her people in conven-
tion assembled, has declared her separation from the United
States. Under these circumstances, of course my functions are
terminated here. It has seemed to me proper, however, that I
should appear in the Senate to announce that fact to my asso-
ciates, and I will say but very little more. The occasion does
not invite me to go into argument, and my physical condition
would not permit me to do so if it were otherwise; and yet it
seems to become me to say something on the part of the State
I here represent, on an occasion so solemn as this.

It is known to Senators who have served with me here that
I have for many years advocated, as an essential attribute of

X652 JEFFERSON DAVIS

State sovereignty, the right of a State to secede from the Union.
Therefore, if I had not believed there was justifiable cause; if I
had thought that Mississippi was acting without sufficient provo-
cation or without an existing necessity, I should still, under my
theory of the Government, because of my allegiance to the State
of which I am a citizen, have been bound by her action. I,
however, may be permitted to say that I do think she has justi-
fiable cause, and I approve of her act. I conferred with her
people before that act was taken, counseled them then that if
the state of things which they apprehended should exist when
the convention met, they should take the action which they have
now adopted.

I hope none who hear me will confound this expression of
mine with the advocacy of the right of a State to remain in the
Union, and to disregard its constitutional obligations by the nul-
lification of the law. Such is not my theory. Nullification and
secession, so often confounded, are indeed antagonistic principles.
Nullification is a remedy which it is sought to apply within the
Union, and against the agent of the States. It is only to be
justified when the agent has violated his constitutional obligation,
and a State, assuming to judge for itself, denies the right of the
agent thus to act, and appeals to the other States of the Union
for a decision; but when the States themselves, and when the
people of the States have so acted as to convince us that they
will not regard our constitutional rights, then, and then for the
first time, arises the doctrine of secession in its practical appli-
cation.

A great man who now reposes with his fathers, and who has
been often arraigned for a want of fealty to the Union, advo-
cated the doctrine of Nullification, because it preserved the Union.
It was because of his deep-seated attachment to the Union, his
determination to find some remedy for existing ills short of a
severance of the ties which bound South Carolina to the other
States, that Mr. Calhoun advocated the doctrine of Nullification,
which he proclaimed to be peaceful, to be within the limits of
State power, not to disturb the Union, but only to be a means
of bringing the agent before the tribunal of the States for their
judgment.

Secession belongs to a different class of remedies. It is to be
justified upon the basis that the States are sovereign. There was
a time when none denied it. I hope the time may come again,

JEFFERSON DAVIS

when a better comprehension of the theory of our Government
and the inalienable rights of the people of the States will pre-
vent any one from denying that each State is a sovereign, and
thus may reclaim the grants which it has made to any agent
whomsoever.

I therefore say I concur in the action of the people of Mis-
sissippi, believing it to be necessary and proper, and I should have
been bound by their action if my belief had been otherwise ; and
this brings me to the important point which I wish on this last
occasion to present to the Senate. It is by this confounding of
nullification and secession that the name of a great man, whose
ashes now mingle with his mother earth, has been invoked to
justify coercion against a seceded State. The phrase, " to execute
the laws," was an expression which General Jackson applied to
the case of a State refusing to obey the laws while yet a mem-
ber of the Union. That is not the case which is now presented.
The laws are to be executed over the United States, and upon
the people of the United States. They have no relation to any
foreign country. It is a perversion of terms, at least it is a
great misapprehension of the case, which cites that expression
for application to a State which has withdrawn from the Union.
You may make war on a foreign State. If it be the purpose of
gentlemen, they may make war against a State which has with-
drawn from the Union; but there are no laws of the United
States to be executed within the limits of a seceded State. A
State finding herself in the condition in which Mississippi has
judged she is, in which her safety requires that she should pro-
vide for the maintenance of her rights out of the Union, surren-
ders all the benefits (and they are known to be many), deprives
herself of the advantages (they are known to be great), severs
all the ties of affection (and they are close and enduring), which
have bound her to the Union; and thus divesting herself of every
benefit, taking upon herself every burden, she claims to be ex-
empt from any power to execute the laws of the United States
within her limits.

I well remember an occasion when Massachusetts was ar-
raigned before the bar of the Senate, and when then the doctrine
of coercion was rife and to be applied against her because of the
rescue of a fugitive slave in Boston. My opinion then was the
same that it is now. Not in a spirit of egotism, but to show
that I am not influenced in my opinion because the case is my

own, I refer to that time and that occasion as containing the
opinion which I then entertained, and on which my present con-
duct is based. I then said, if Massachusetts, following her through
a stated line of conduct, chooses to take the last step which sep-
arates her from the Union, it is her right to go, and I will nei-
ther vote one dollar nor one man to coerce her back; but will
say to her, God speed, in memory of the kind associations which
once existed between her and the other States.

It has been a conviction of pressing necessity, it has been a
belief that we are to be deprived in the Union of the rights
which our fathers bequeathed to us, which has brought Mississippi
into her present decision. She has heard proclaimed the theory
that all men are created free and equal, and this made the basis
of an attack upon her social institutions; and the sacred Declar-
ation of Independence has been invoked to maintain the position
of the equality of the races. That Declaration of Independence
is to be construed by the circumstances and purposes for which
it was made. The communities were declaring their independ-
ence; the people of those communities were asserting that no
man was born — to use the language of Mr. Jefferson — booted
and spurred to ride over the rest of mankind; that men were
created equal — meaning the men of the political community;
that there was no divine right to rule; that no man inherited the
right to govern; that there were .no classes by which power and
place descended to families, but that all stations were equally
within the grasp of each member of the body politic. These
were the great principles they announced; these were the pur-
poses for which they made their declaration; these were the ends
to which their enunciation was directed. They have no refer-
ence to the slave; else, how happened it that among the items of
arraignment made against George III. was that he endeavored to
do just what the North has been endeavoring of late to do — to
stir up insurrection among our slaves ? Had the Declaration an-
nounced that the negroes were free and equal, how was the
Prince to be arraigned for stirring up insurrection among them ?
And how was this to be enumerated among the high crimes
which caused the colonies to sever their connection with
the mother country ? When our Constitution was formed, the
same idea was rendered more palpable, for there we find provi-
sion made for that very class of persons as property ; they were
not put upon the footing of equality with white men — not even

JEFFERSON DAVIS

upon that of paupers and convicts; but, so far as representation
was concerned, were discriminated against as a lower caste, only
to be represented in the numerical proportion of three-fifths.

Then, Senators, we recur to the compact which binds us to-
gether; we recur to the principles upon which our Government
was founded; and when you deny them, and when you deny to
us the right to withdraw from a Government which, thus per-
verted, threatens to be destructive of our rights, we but tread in
the path of our fathers when we proclaim our independence, and
take the hazard. This is done not in hostility to others, not to
injure any section of the country, not even for our own pecuniary
benefit, but from the high and solemn motive of defending and
protecting the rights we inherited, and which it is our sacred
duty to transmit unshorn to our children.

I find in myself, perhaps, a type of the general feeling of my
constituents towards yours. I am sure I feel no hostility to you,
Senators from the North. I am sure there is not one of you,
whatever sharp discussion there may have been between us, to
whom I cannot now say, in the presence of my God, I wish you
well; and such I am sure is the feeling of the people whom I
represent towards those whom you represent. I therefore feel
that I but express their desire when I say I hope, and they hope,
for peaceful relations with you, though we must part. They may
be mutually beneficial to us in the future, as they have been in
the past, if you so will it. The reverse may bring disaster on
-every portion of the country; and if you will have it thus, we
will invoke the God of our fathers, who delivered them from
the power of the lion, to protect us from the ravages of the
bear; and thus, putting our trust in God and in our own firm
hearts and strong arms, we will vindicate the right as best
we may.

In the course of my service here, associated at different times
with a great variety of Senators, I see now around me some
with whom I have served long; there have been points of colli-
sion, but whatever of offense there has been to me, I leave
here; I carry with me no hostile remembrance. Whatever offense
I have given which has not been redressed, or for which satisfac-
tion has not been demanded, I have, Senators, in this hour of
our parting, to offer you my apology for any pain which in heat
of discussion I have inflicted. I go hence unencumbered of the
remembrance of any injury received, and having discharged the

JEFFERSON DAVIS

duty of making the only reparation in my power for any injury
offered.

Mr. President and Senators, having made the announcement
which the occasion seemed to me to require, it only remains for
me to bid you a final adieu.

INAUGURAL ADDRESS OF 1861
(Delivered at Montgomery, Alabama, Monday, February i8th, 1861)

Gentlemen of the Congress of the Confederate States of America, Friends
and Fellow- Citizens : —

CALLED to the difficult and responsible station of Chief Exec-
utive of the provisional government which you have insti-
tuted, I approach the discharge of the duties assigned to
me with a humble distrust of my abilities, but with a sustain-
ing .confidence in the wisdom of those who are to guide and aid
me in the administration of public affairs, and an abiding faith
in the virtue and patriotism of the people.

Looking forward to the speedy establishment of a permanent
government to take the place of this, and which, by its greater
moral and physical power, will be better able to combat with the
many difficulties which arise from the conflicting interests of
separate nations, I enter upon the duties of the office to which
I have been chosen with the hope that the beginning of our
career, as a Confederacy, may not be obstructed by hostile opposi-
tion to our enjoyment of the separate existence and independence
which we have asserted, and, with the blessing of Providence,
intend to maintain. Our present condition, achieved in a man-
ner unprecedented in the history of nations, illustrates the
American idea that governments rest upon the consent of the
governed, and that it is the right of the people to alter or abol-
ish governments whenever they become destructive of the ends
for which they were established.

The declared purpose of the compact of union from which we
have withdrawn was <(to establish justice, insure domestic tran-
quillity, provide for the common defense, promote the general
welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and
our posterity w; and when in the judgment of the sovereign States
now composing this Confederacy it had been perverted from the
purposes for which it was ordained, and had ceased to answer

JEFFERSON DAVIS

the ends for which it was established, a peaceful appeal to the
ballot box declared that so far as they were concerned, the Gov-
ernment created by that compact should cease to exist. In this
they merely asserted a right which the Declaration of Independ-
ence of 1776 had defined to be inalienable. Of the time and oc-
casion for its exercise, they as sovereigns were the final judges,
each for itself. The impartial and enlightened verdict of man-
kind will vindicate the rectitude of our conduct, and he, who
knows the hearts of men, will judge of the sincerity with which
we labored to preserve the government of our fathers in its
spirit. The right solemnly proclaimed at the birth of the States
and which has been affirmed and reaffirmed in the bills of rights
of States subsequently admitted into the Union of 1789, undenia-
bly recognizes in the people the power to resume the authority
delegated for the purposes of government. Thus the sovereign
States, here represented, proceeded to form this Confederacy, and
it is by abuse of language that their act has been denominated
a revolution. They formed a new alliance, but within each State
its government has remained, and the rights of person and prop-
erty have not been disturbed. The agent, through whom they
communicated with foreign nations, is changed; but this does not
necessarily interrupt their international relations.

Sustained by the consciousness that the transition from the
former Union to the present Confederacy has not proceeded from
a disregard on our part of just obligations, or any failure to per-
form any constitutional duty; moved by no interest or passion to
invade the rights of others; anxious to cultivate peace and com-
merce with all nations, if we may not hope to avoid war, we may
at least expect that posterity will aquit us of having needlessly
engaged in it. Doubly justified by the absence of wrong on our
part, and by wanton aggression on the part of others, there can
be no cause to doubt that the courage and patriotism of the
people of the Confederate States will be found equal to any
measures of defense which honor and security may require.

An agricultural people, whose chief interest is the export of a
commodity required in every manufacturing country, our true
policy is peace and the freest trade which our necessities will
permit. It is alike our interest, and that of all those to whom
we would sell and from whom we would buy, that there should
be the fewest practicable restrictions upon the interchange of
commodities. There can be but little rivalry between ours and

J623 JEFFERSON DAVIS

any manufacturing or navigating community, such as the north-
eastern States of the American Union. It must follow, there-
fore, that a mutual interest would invite good-will and kind
offices. If, however, passion or the lust of dominion should
cloud the judgment or inflame the ambition of those States, we
must prepare to meet the emergency, and to maintain, by the
final arbitrament of the sword, the position which we have
assumed among the nations of the earth. We have entered upon
the career of independence, and it must be inflexibly pursued.
Through many years of controversy with our late associates, the
Northern States, we have vainly endeavored to secure tranquillity
and to obtain respect for the rights to which we are entitled.
As a necessity, not a choice, we have resorted to the remedy of
separation; and henceforth our energies must be directed to the
conduct of our own affairs and the perpetuity of the Confederacy
which we have formed. If a just perception of mutual interest
shall permit us peaceably to pursue our separate political career,
my most earnest desire will have been fulfilled; but if this be
denied to us, and the integrity of our territory and jurisdiction
be assailed, it will but remain for us, with firm resolve, to appeal
to arms and invoke the blessings of Providence on a just cause.

As a consequence of our new condition, and with a view to
meet anticipated wants, it will be necessary to provide for the
speedy and efficient organization of branches of the Executive
Department, having special charge of foreign intercourse, finance,
military affairs, and the postal service.

For purposes of defense, the Confederate States may, under
ordinary circumstances, rely mainly upon the militia; but it is
deemed advisable in the present condition of affairs that there
should be a well-instructed and disciplined army, more numerous
than would usually be required on a peace establishment. I also
suggest that for the protection of our harbors and commerce on
the high seas a navy adapted to those objects will be required.
These necessities have doubtless engaged the attention of Con-
gress.

With a Constitution differing only from that of our fathers
in so far as it is explanatory of their well-known intent, freed
from the sectional conflicts which have interfered with the pur-
suit of the general welfare, it is not unreasonable to expect that
States from which we have recently parted may seek to unite
their fortunes with ours under the Government which we have

JEFFERSON DAVIS

instituted. For this your Constitution makes adequate provision;
but beyond this, if I mistake not the judgment and will of the
people, a re-union with the States from which we have separated
is neither practicable nor desirable. To increase the power, de-
velop the resources, and promote the happiness of the Confeder-
acy, it is requisite that there should be so much homogeneity
that the welfare of every portion shall be the aim of the whole.
Where this does not exist, antagonisms are engendered which
must and should result in separation.

Actuated solely by the desire to preserve our own rights and
promote our own welfare, the separation of the Confederate
States has been marked by no aggression upon others and fol-
lowed by no domestic convulsion. Our industrial pursuits have
received no check; the cultivation of our fields has progressed as
heretofore; and even should we be involved in war, there would
be no considerable diminution in the production of the staples
which have constituted our exports, and in which the commercial
world has an interest scarcely less than our own. This common
interest of the producer and consumer can only be interrupted
by an exterior force, which should obstruct its transmission to
foreign markets — a course of conduct which would be as unjust
towards us as it would be detrimental to manufacturing and com-
mercial interests abroad. Should reason guide the action of the
Government from which we have separated, a policy so detri-
mental to the civilized world, the Northern States included,
could not be dictated by even the strongest desire to inflict in-
jury upon us; but if otherwise, a terrible responsibility will rest
upon it, and the suffering of millions will bear testimony to the
folly and wickedness of our aggressors. In the meantime, there
will remain to us, besides the ordinary means before suggested,
the well-known resources for retaliation upon the commerce of
the enemy.

Experience in public stations of subordinate grades to this
which your kindness has conferred has taught me that care and
toil and disappointment are the price of official elevation. You
will see many errors to forgive, many deficiencies to tolerate,
but you shall not find in me either a want of zeal or fidelity to
the cause that is to me highest in hope and of most enduring
affection. Your generosity has bestowed upon me an undeserved
distinction — one which I neither sought nor desired. Upon the
continuance of that sentiment, and upon your wisdom and patri-

j66o JEFFERSON DAVIS

otism I rely to direct and support me in the performance of the
duty required at my hands.

We have changed the constituent parts but not the system of
our Government. The Constitution formed by our fathers is
that of these Confederate States in their exposition of it; and in
the judicial construction it has received, we have a light which
reveals its true meaning.

Thus instructed as to the just interpretation of the instru-
ment, and ever remembering that all offices are but trusts held
for the people and that delegated powers are to be strictly con-
strued, I will hope by due diligence in the performance of my
duties, though I may disappoint your expectations, yet to retain,
when retiring, something of the good-will and confidence which
welcomed my entrance into office.

It is joyous, in the midst of perilous times, to look around
upon a people united in heart, where one purpose of high resolve
animates and actuates the whole — where the sacrifices to be
made are not weighed in the balance against honor and right
and liberty and equality. Obstacles may retard — they cannot
long prevent — the progress of a movement sanctified by its jus-
tice and sustained by a virtuous people. Reverently let us
invoke the God of our fathers to guide and protect us in our
efforts to perpetuate the principles which, by his blessing, they
were able to vindicate, establish, and transmit to their posterity;
and with a continuance of his favor, ever gratefully acknowl-
edged, we may hopefully look forward to success, to peace, and
to prosperity.

AGAINST CLAY AND COMPROMISE

(From a Speech Delivered in the Senate, February i4th, 1850, «The Senate
Having in Committee of the Whole the Resolutions Submitted by Mr.
Clay» on the Admission of California)

IF, SIR, the spirit of sectional aggrandizement, or, if gentlemen
prefer, this love they bear the African race, shall cause the
disunion of these States, the last chapter of our history will
be a sad commentary upon the justice and the wisdom of our
people. That this Union, replete with blessings to its own citi-
zens and diffusive of hope to the rest of mankind, should fall a
victim to a selfish aggrandizement and a pseudo philanthropy,

JEFFERSON DAVIS ,66l

prompting one portion of the Union to war upon the domestic
rights and peace of another, would be a deep reflection on the
good sense and patriotism of our day and generation. But, sir,
if this last chapter in our history shall ever be written, the reflect-
ive reader will ask, Whence proceeded this hostility of the North
against the South ? He will find it there recorded that the
South, in opposition to her own immediate interests, engaged
with the North in the unequal struggle of the Revolution. He
will find again that when Northern seamen were impressed, their
brethren of the South considered it cause for war, and entered
warmly into the contest with the haughty power then claiming
to be mistress of the seas. He will find that the South, afar off,
unseen and unheard, toiling in the pursuits of agriculture, had
filled the shipping, and supplied the staple for manufactures,
which enriched the North. He will find that she was the great
consumer of Northern fabrics — that she not only paid for these
their fair value in the markets of the world, but that she also
paid their increased value, derived from the imposition of revenue
duties. And if, still further, he seek for the cause of this hos-
tility, it at last is to be found in the fact that the South held
the African race in bondage, being the descendants of those who
were mainly purchased from the people of the North. And this
was the great cause. For this the North claimed that the South
should be restricted from future growth — that around her should
be drawn, as it were, a sanitary cordon to prevent the extension
of a moral leprosy; and if for that it shall be written the South
resisted, it would be but in keeping with every page she has
added to the history of our country.

It depends on those in the majority to say whether this last
chapter in our history shall be written or not. It depends on
them now to decide whether the strife between the different sec-
tions shall be arrested before it has become impossible, or whether
it shall proceed to a final catastrophe. I, sir — and I speak only
for myself — am willing to meet any fair proposition; to settle
upon anything which promises security for the future; anything
which assures me of permanent peace; and I am willing to make
whatever sacrifice I may properly be called on to render for that
purpose. Nor, sir, is it a light responsibility. If I strictly meas-
ured my conduct by the late message of the Governor and the
recent expressions of opinion in my State, I should have no
power to accept any terms save the unqualified admission of the

JEFFERSON DAVIS

equal rights of the citizens of the South to go into any of the
Territories of the United States with any and every species of
property held among us. I am willing, however, to take my
share of the responsibility which the crisis of our country de-
mands. I am willing to rely on the known love of the people I
represent for the whole country and the abiding respect which
I know they entertain for the Union of these States. If, sir, I
distrusted their attachment to our Government, and if I believed
they had that restless spirit of disunion which has been ascribed
to the South, I should know full well that I had no such founda-
tion as this to rely upon — no such great reserve in the heart of
the people to fall back upon in the hour of accountability.

Mr. President, is there such incompatibility of interest between
the two sections of this country that they cannot profitably live
together ? Does the agriculture of the South injure the manu-
factures of the North ? On the other hand, are they not their life-
blood ? And think you if one portion of the Union, however
great it might be in commerce and manufactures, were separated
from all the agricultural districts, that it would long maintain its
supremacy ? If any one so believes, let him turn to the written
history of commercial States; let him look upon the moldering
palaces of Venice; let him ask for the faded purple of Tyre, and
visit the ruins of Carthage; there he will see written the fate of
every country which rests its prosperity on commerce and manu-
factures alone. United we have grown to our present dignity and
power — united we may go on to a destiny which the human
mind cannot measure. Separated, I feel that it requires no
prophetic eye to see that the portion of the country which is
now scattering the seeds of disunion to which I have referred,
will be that which will suffer most. Grass will grow on the
pavements now worn by the constant tread of the human throng
which waits on commerce, and the shipping will abandon your
ports for those which now furnish the staples of trade. And we
who produce the great staple upon which your commerce and
manufactures rest, will produce those staples still; shipping
will fill our harbor; and why may we not found the Tyre of
modern commerce within our own limits ? Why may we not
bring the manufacturers to the side of agriculture, and com-
merce, too, the ready servant of both ?

But, sir, I have no disposition to follow this subject. I cer-
tainly can derive no pleasure from the contemplation of anything

JEFFERSON DAVIS

which can impair the prosperity of any portion of this Union;
and I only refer to it that those who suppose we are tied by
interest or fear should look the question in the face, and under-
stand that it is mainly a feeling of attachment to the Union
which has long bound, and now binds the South. But, Mr. Pres-
ident, I ask Senators to consider how long affection can be proof
against such trial and injury and provocation as the South is
continually receiving.

The case in which this discrimination against the South is
attempted, the circumstances under which it was introduced, ren-
der it especially offensive. It will not be difficult to imagine the
feeling with which a Southern soldier during the Mexican War
received the announcement that the House of Representatives
had passed that odious measure, the Wilmot Proviso; and that
he, although then periling his life, abandoning all the comforts
of home, and sacrificing his interests, was, by the legislature of
his country, marked as coming from a portion of the Union
which was not entitled to the equal benefits of whatever might
result from the service to which he was contributing whatever
power he possessed. Nor will it be difficult to conceive of the
many sons of the South whose blood has stained those battle-
fields, whose ashes now mingle with Mexican earth, that some,
when they last looked on the flag of their country, may have
felt their dying moments embittered by the recollection that that
flag cast not an equal shadow of protection over the land of
their birth, the graves of their parents, and the homes of their
children so soon to be orphans. Sir, I ask Northern Senators to
make the case their own — to carry to their own fireside the idea
of such intrusion and offensive discrimination as is offered to us
— realize these irritations, so galling to the humble, so intoler-
able to the haughty, and wake before it is too late, from the
dream that the South will tamely submit. Measure the conse-
quences to us of your assumption, and ask yourselves whether,
as a free, honorable, and brave people, you would submit to it.

It is essentially the characteristic of the chivalrous that they
never speculate upon the fears of any man, and I trust that no
such speculations will be made upon the idea that may be enter-
tained in any quarter that the South, from fear of her slaves, is
necessarily opposed to a dissolution of this Union. She has no
such fear; her slaves would be to her now, as they were in the
Revolution, an element of military strength. I trust that no

-1664 JEFFERSON DAVIS

speculations will be made upon either the condition or the sup-
posed weakness of the South. They will bring sad disappoint-
ments to those who indulge them. Rely upon her devotion to
the Union, rely upon the feeling of fraternity she inherited and
has never failed to manifest; rely upon the nationality and free-
dom from sedition which has in all ages characterized an agricul-
tural people; give her justice, sheer justice, and the reliance will
never fail you.

Then, Mr. President, I ask that some substantial proposition
may be made by the majority in regard to this question. It
is for those who have the power to pass it to propose one. It is
for those who are threatening us with the loss of that which we
are entitled to enjoy to state, if there be any compromise, what
that compromise is. We are unable to pass any measure, if we
propose it; therefore, I have none to suggest. We are unable to
bend you to any terms which we may offer; we are under the
ban of your purpose; therefore, from you, if from anywhere,
the proposition must come. I trust that we shall meet it and
bear the responsibility as becomes us; that we shall not seek to
escape from it; that we shall not seek to transfer to other places,
or other times, or other persons, that responsibility which de-
volves upon us; and I hope the earnestness which the occasion
justifies will not be mistaken for the ebullition of passion, nor
the language of warning be construed as a threat. We cannot,
without the most humiliating confession of the supremacy of
faction, evade our constitutional obligations, and our obligations
under the treaty with Mexico, to organize governments in the
Territories of California and New Mexico. I trust that we will
not seek to escape from the responsibility, and leave the country
unprovided for unless by an irregular admission of new States;
that we will act upon the good example of Washington in the
case of Tennessee, and of Jefferson in the case of Louisiana;
that we will not, if we abandon those high standards, do more
than come down to modern examples — that we will not go fur-
ther than to permit those who have the forms of government
under the Constitution to assume sovereignty over territory of
the United States; that we may at least, I say, assert the right
to know who they are, how many they are, where they voted,
how they voted, and whose certificate is presented to us of the
fact before it is conceded to them to determine the fundamental
law of the country and to prescribe the conditions on which

JEFFERSON DAVIS

other citizens of the United States may enter it. To reach all
this knowledge, we must go through the intermediate stage of
territorial government.

How will you determine what is the seal, and who are the
officers of a community unknown as an organized body to the
Congress of the United States? Can the right be admitted in
that community to usurp the sovereignty over territory which
belongs to the States of the Union ? All these questions must
be answered before I can consent to any such irregular proceed-
ing as that which is now presented in the case of California.

Mr. President, thanking the Senate for the patience they have
shown towards me, I again express the hope that those who
have the power to settle this distracting question — those who
have the ability to restore peace, concord, and lasting harmony
to the United States — will give us some substantial proposition,
such as magnanimity can offer, and such as we can honorably
accept. I, being one of the minority in the Senate and the
Union, have nothing to offer, except an assurance of co-operation
in anything which my principles will allow me to adopt, and
which promises permanent substantial security,
v — 105

i666

MICHAEL DAVITT

(1846-)

MICHAEL DAVITT has been one of the most forceful men of his
generation, made so by the intensity of his hatred of op-
pression. He was born in the village of Straide, County
Mayo, Ireland, in 1846. His father belonged to the humblest class of
Irish tenant-farmers and Michael's career was determined by the
eviction of the family from their holding. This forced them to emi-
grate to England where Michael, while still a boy, lost his arm in a
Lancashire cotton factory. As he could not support himself by man-
ual labor, his family managed to .give him the rudiments of an
education — for a mind like his, enough to serve as the key to all
knowledge. He went from school to a printing office, and in 1866
began in the Fenian movement the career which has made him cele-
brated all over the English-speaking world. He has been without
doubt the most effective Irish Nationalist of his generation and has
paid for his effectiveness by undergoing repeated imprisonment.
One of his convictions was for (< treason-felony,8 and he served over
seven years of the fifteen-year sentence through which it was sought
to silence his eloquent protests against abuses.

IRELAND A NATION, SELF-CHARTERED AND SELF-RULED
(From the Address in Mechanics' Hall, Boston, December 8th, 1878)

WHEN we appeal to mankind for the justice of our cause, we
must assume the attitude of a united, because an earnest,
people, and show reason why we refuse to accept our
political annihilation. We can only do this by the thoroughness
of purpose which should actuate, and the systematic exertions
which alone can justify, us in claiming' the recognition due to a
country which has never once acquiesced in its subjugation, nor
abandoned its resolve to be free. Viewing that country then, as
she presents herself to-day, the problem of her redemption may
be put in this formula: Given the present social and political
condition of Ireland, with the spirit, national tendencies, physical

MICHAEL DAVITT

1667

and moral forces of her people — together with the power, influ-
ence, and policy arrayed against them — to indicate what should
be the plans pursued, and action adopted, whereby the condition
of our people could be materially improved, in efforts tending to
raise them to their rightful position as a Nation.

I confess to the difficulty of solving such a problem, but not
so much as to the putting it into practice if theoretically demon-
strated; but —

<( Right endeavor's not in vain —
Its reward is in the doing;
And the rapture of pursuing,
Is the prize the vanquished gain.'

Let us see if we can discover a key to the difficulty of the
Irish question. I will assume that there are certain matters or
contingencies important to or affecting the Irish race which are
of equal interest to its people (irrespective of what differences of
opinion there may be amongst them on various other concerns),
— such as the preservation of the distinctive individuality of the
race itself among peoples; the earning for it that respect and
prestige to which it is by right and inheritance entitled, by striv-
ing for its improvement, physically and morally, and its intellec-
tual and social advancement, revival of its ancient language, etc. ;
and that there are past occurrences and sectional animosities
which all classes must reasonably desire to prevent in future, for
the honor and welfare of themselves and country, — such as re-
ligious feuds and provincial antipathies. I will also assume that
the raising of our peasant population from the depths of social
misery to which it has been sunk by an unjust land system
would meet with the approval of most classes in Ireland, and re-
ceive the moral co-operation of Irishmen abroad, as would also
the improvement of the dwellings of our agricultural population,
which project, I also assume, would be accepted and supported
by all parties in Irish political life. Without particularizing any
further measures for the common good of our people, for which
political parties cannot refuse to mutually co-operate, if consistent
with their raison d'etre as striving for their country's welfare, I
think it will be granted that Nationalists (pronounced or quies-
cent), Obstructionists, Home Rulers, Repealers, and others, could
unite in obtaining the reforms already enumerated by concerted
action on and by whatever means the present existing state of

!668 MICHAEL DAVITT

affairs in Ireland can place within their reach. Such concerted
action for the general good would necessitate a centripetal plat-
form, as representing that central principle or motive which con-
stitutes the hold and supplies the influence that a country's
government has upon the people governed.

A race of people, to preserve itself from destruction by a
hostile race, or by partisan spirit and factious strife internally,
or absorption by a people among which it may be scattered,
absolutely requires some central idea, principle, or platform of
motives of action, by which to exercise its national or race indi-
viduality and strength, with a view to its improvement and pres-
ervation. A people's own established government supplies this
need, of course, but where, as in Ireland, there is no govern-
ment of or by the people, and the dominant power is but a
strong executive faction, the national strength is wasted: i. By
the divide et impera policy of that dominant English faction; 2.
By desperate attempts to overthrow that power; and 3. By hith-
erto fruitless agitation to win a just rule, or force remedial legis-
lation from an alien assembly by means repugnant to the pride
of the largest portion of our people; while here, in this great
shelterland of peoples, the Irish race itself is fast disappearing
in the composite American. If, therefore, a platform be put
forth embodying resistance to every hostile element pitted, or
adverse influence at work, against the individuality of Ireland
and its people, and a program of national labor for the general
welfare of our country be adopted, resting upon those wants and
desires which have a first claim upon • the consideration of Irish-
men — such a platform, if put forth, not to suit a particular
party, but to embrace all that is earnest and desirous among our
people for labor in the vineyard of Ireland's common good, a
great national desire would be gratified, and an immense stride
be taken towards the goal of each Irishman's hopes. . . .

It is showing a strange want of knowledge of England's
hatred and jealousy of Ireland to suppose that a government
formed from any of the English parties would ever concede all
that could satisfy the desires of the Irish people; and to ground
an apprehension upon such an improbable contingency is a mis-
take.

Again, the supposition that the spirit of Irish nationality,
which has combated against destruction for seven centuries, only
awaits a few concessions from its baffled enemy to be snuffed out

MICHAEL DAVITT

1669

thereby, does not speak highly for those who hold that opinion
of its frailty. In my opinion, we may expect to hear no more
of " the cause w when the genius of Tipperary shall carve the
Rock of Cashel into a statue of Judge Keogh, and Croagh Pat-
rick shall walk to London to render homage to the Duke of Con-
naught. Every chapter of our history, every ensanguined field upon
which our forefathers died in defense of that cause, every name in
the martyrology of Ireland, from Fitzgerald to Charles McCarthy,
proclaim the truth of Meagher's impassioned words: "From the
Irish mind the inspiring thought that there once was an Irish
nation self -chartered and self -ruled can never be effaced; the
burning hope that there will be one again can never be extin-
guished. w

With these convictions, and the consummation of such hopes
predestined by an indestructible cause and imperishable national
principles, Irish Nationalists can, without fear of compromising
such principles, grapple with West-Britonism on its own ground,
and strangle its efforts to imperialize Ireland. The popular party
in Ireland has a right to participate in everything concerning the
social and political condition of the country; to compete with the
constitutional and other parties who cater for public support, and
stamp in this manner its Nationalist convictions and principles
upon everything Irish, from a local board of poor-law guardians
to a (by circumstances compulsory) representation in an alien
parliament.

No party has a right to call itself National which neglects
resorting to each and every justifiable means to end the frightful
misery under which our land-crushed people groan. It is exhib-
iting a callous indifference to the state of social degradation to
which the power of the landlords of Ireland has sunk our peas-
antry to ask them to (< plod on in sluggish misery from sire to
son, from age to age,w until we, by force of party and party
selfishness, shall free the country. It is playing the part of the
Levite who passed by the man plundered by thieves. It is see-
ing a helpless creature struggling against suffocation in a ditch,
and making no immediate effort to save him. If we refuse to
play the part of the Good Samaritan to those who have fallen
among robber landlords, other Irishmen will not. The cry has
gone forth, * Down with the land system that has cursed and
depopulated Ireland"; and this slogan cry of war has come from
the Constitutionalists.

1670

MICHAEL DAVITT

In the name of the common good of our country, its honor,
interests, social and political, let the two great Irish parties agree
to differ on party principles, while emulating each other in serv-
ice to our impoverished people. Let each endeavor to find
points upon which they can agree, instead of trying to discover
quibbles whereon to differ. Let a centre platform be adopted,
resting on a broad, generous, and comprehensive Nationalism,
which will invite every earnest Irishman upon it. The manhood
strength of Ireland could then become an irresistible power,
standing ready at its post, while the whole Irish race, rallying to
the support of such a platform, would cry : —

(<We want the land that bore us!
We'll make that want our chorus;

And we'll have it yet, tho' hard to get,
By the heavens bending o'er us.w

1671

HENRY LAURENS DAWES

(1816-)

IENRY LAURENS DAWES represented a Massachusetts district in
the House of Representatives from 1857 to 1875. From 1875
to 1893 he was United States Senator from Massachusetts.
He supported the policies of the Republican party from its organiza-
tion, but immediately after the war it was believed for a time that
he would take a determined stand against giving the ballot at once
to the newly emancipated slaves. This expectation was not realized.
During the Reconstruction period and the decade following, the Dem-
ocratic party strongly insisted on a revision of the "War Tariff," and
as there was a theory among economists regardless of party that the
protection given by tariff taxes should be equal to the difference in
cost of raw material and labor cost, the result was the Tariff Com-
mission, supported by Mr. Dawes in 1880. He was born at Cum-
mington, Massachusetts, October i3th, 1816.

THE TARIFF COMMISSION OF 1886

(Delivered in the Senate, May loth, 1880, on the Bill to Provide for a Tariff

Commission)
Mr. President: —

I AM in favor of the bill reported by the Committee on Finance
because I am in favor of a revision and reform of the tariff.
Great inconsistencies and incongruities exist in the tariff. A
great many excessive duties remain upon the statute-book. Many
dutiable articles should be on the free list, and many of the pro-
visions of the tariff have become obsolete and inoperative. The
present is a favorable time for such a revision. The increased
prosperity of the country and of all business in it has so in-
creased the receipts of the Government, both from sources of
internal revenue and from customs duties, as to render such a
revision desirable and possible, keeping in view first the primary
object of the imposition of duties, a revenue for the maintenance
of the Government, and keeping that revenue as near as possible
to its current and necessary expenses. There is an opportunity

1672

HENRY LAURENS DAWES

to revise and reform not only the duties but the methods of en-
forcing the law and collecting them. Some of the circumstances
justifying this course have sprung up without any reference to
legislation. Changes in business, changes in the relations of in-
dustries to each other as well as changes in the sources of rev-
enue to the Government, require the Government to look now to
one quarter and now to another from which little was expected
or received in former times. We should conform our legislation
to the changes going on all the time in the methods of business
as well as in the sources of revenue. All these invoke at our
hands attention to the question whether we shall permit the rev-
enue system of the Government to remain as it is or address
ourselves to the best method of producing out of it a state of
things that shall answer as well the demands of the Government
as the expectations and necessities and claims of those under the
Government without affecting whose business pursuits it is im-
possible to reform the revenue laws.

If I desired the continuance of the present state of things, if
I wished to perpetuate these incongruities and these excesses and
these defects, I should desire that the ideas submitted on Friday
last by the Senator from Kentucky [Mr. Beck] should prevail;
for it is by the attempt to enforce just such ideas in the past
that has come this condition of things. Since the tariff of 1846,
before the tariff of 1846, yea, before from the time of the tariff
of 1842, the effort has been made to establish a tariff system by
precisely the same means as those suggested by the Senator from
Kentucky. All the industries of the land affected by the imposi-
tion of duties, or by the relief of industries from their imposition,
have been summoned before committees from 1842 to to-day in
precisely the same manner suggested by him. They have been
in a great measure also under the control of party organizations.

Sir, I am not about to discuss the comparative claim of one of
the two parties to the confidence and support of the people on this
question of the tariff. I am not here now to say that to the
Democratic party or to the Republican party the country may
most safely turn for relief or for reform. I do not think that it
is a part of my duty, resulting from the conviction of an experi-
ence in this matter somewhat extended, to undertake at this time
to stake the great question involved in the bill and the substi-
tute before the Senate upon the merits of either party. Out of
these contests of parties have come the evils of which we com-

HENRY LAURENS DAWES

plain. We have had the struggle of the one party or the other
to take to itself and appropriate the work of so adjusting the
tariff in this country between the Government and those affected
by it as to seek and obtain from the people some support that
the adversary should not be entitled to; and out of that has
come the shifting from party to party of this question and these
measures; and the Government on the one hand and the many
industries of the country on the other have suffered in this con-
flict of party. It is only from the possibility now presented that
the wise men of both parties can take up this question without
reference to its effect upon political parties, and determine it
upon its merits, that anything like permanency, built upon jus-
tice and fairness, will ever result from legislation.

A duty for the purpose of revenue must be imposed in one
of two ways: indifferently, at haphazard, by blind folly; or with
discrimination. I take it that neither the Senator from Kentucky
nor any other Senator proposes to impose duties for revenue
blindly and indiscriminately, without regard to what will be the
effect either upon the revenue or upon the subject-matter upon
which the duty is imposed. Then it must be imposed with dis-
crimination. And one other question arises immediately and set-
tles the whole matter; it must either be imposed upon the raw
material or upon the manufactured article, and no man can ad-
dress himself one moment to the consideration of this question,
but must settle at the threshold the point whether he will impose
that duty upon the raw material or upon the manufactured arti-
cle.

These men represent the manufactured article who are invited
before a committee of Congress, by the side of whom in the
proposition of the Senator from Arkansas two or three experts
are invited to take seats. They are producers in this land. Ac-
cording to the census of 1860 their products amounted to
$1,800,000,000, and in 1870 to $4,000,000,000, an increase in value
of 102 per cent, in ten years. Making all due allowance for the
disturbance of prices by inflation, in actual quantity during those
ten years the increase had been 52 per cent. Fifty-two per cent,
more in actual quantities was produced at the end of that dec-
ade. According to that rate of increase, well-nigh eight billion
dollars' worth of fabrics will have been produced and developed
in the year 1880, as shown by the census. This is represented
by men who must appear before this committee. This is the

1674

HENRY LAURENS DAWES

production in this land consumed here, made here for our own
people, under such an adjustment of duties as the Government
was under the necessity of imposing, so imposed that they could
be produced here rather than brought here already produced;
for where the production is, there is the manufacture, there are
the people whose hands fashion these fabrics; and where the
people are whose hands manufacture these fabrics, there is the
capital which moves the thousand busy fingers of industry, and
there is the town built up by those whose time is employed in
these productions; and where the town is, there is the school-
house and there is the Church and there is the State.

These are productions which, under a proper adjustment of
the tariff, as I conceive, every Senator I apprehend would say it
were better should be on this side of the Atlantic than on the
other. The men who appear before these committees are citi-
zens of the United States, part and parcel of the body politic,
having all sorts of politics and political affiliations, with their
thoughts turned to the productions of these industries which are
required for consumption by the people of this land. They fur-
nish employment for the people, the thousands and tens of thou-
sands and millions of people who find employment in these
establishments, fashioning for our own people the fabrics our
own people consume. They are those most interested in this
question. They furnish employment.

Sir, the condition of things which I have described renders a
revision of the tariff not only possible, but necessary. We have
arrived at that condition in production that puts it in our power
to take off these large and excessive duties, for I hold that,
keeping to the idea that revenue is the object and purpose in
laying the duty upon the manufactured article as against the
raw material, that should never rise one penny above a perfect
equality with this. Put the American producer, in levying your
duties, simply upon an equality with the foreign producer; make
up the difference between the interest on his money, the cost of
his living, and the wages he pays; just even them up and no
more; lift up and not pull down; for if you desire an inter-
change of produce, he who can manufacture the cheapest will in
the end triumph over his neighbor. On any other basis, if you
maintain these industries in this land, you must cut down the
pay of the laborer to a level with the pay of him with whom
you compete, or you cannot compete with him.

HENRY LAURENS DAWES

The question is all summed up in this single aphorism: To
the American laborer belongs the labor which is to be performed
for Americans; whatever is to be performed for us should be
done here among us. I desire for one to see an effort made to
frame a revenue tariff upon this principle. See to it that the
Government is supplied; take that which it is necessary to levy
upon production and levy it upon manufactured articles, so dis-
tributed upon each and every article as well as you may until
you bring up our own producers to a level in cost with the for-
eign competition, and let the raw material come in free. Sir, to
that work, involving the growth and prosperity and development
of this country, all men of all parties, the wisest and the most
discreet and expert, ought to be invited. No one party can ac-
complish it. The doctrine thus developed does not exist in this
or that party exclusively. It has come to be every day more and
more the common sentiment and conviction of economists through-
out the country.

1676

WILLIAM L DAYTON

(1807-1864)

jN HIS opposition to the Mexican War and to the acquisition of
Mexican territory by conquest or forced sale, William L.
Dayton, of New Jersey, represented a large body of Whigs
in the Northern States, who deprecated agitation for the immediate
abolition of slavery, but foresaw that the organization of new terri-
tory would force issues. His speeches of 1847 and 1850 are among
the most important historically of the two decades. He was born at
Baskingridge, New Jersey, February i7th, 1807. Educated at Prince-
ton, he became eminent at the bar of his native State and was Asso-
ciate Justice of its supreme court from 1838 to 1842. From 1842 to
1851 he represented New Jersey in the United States Senate. A
Whig during this period, the dissolution of that party as a result of
the slavery agitation forced him to act with the new Republican
party. He was a candidate for Vice-President in 1856, and in 1861
President Lincoln appointed him Minister to France. He died at
Paris, December ist, 1864.

ARRAIGNING PRESIDENT POLK
(From a Speech on the Mexican War, January 28th, 1847)

THE annexation of Texas, and the subsequent order of the
President, placing our armies on the Rio Grande (pointing
your guns to rake the streets of the city of Matamoras),
were the obvious and immediate causes of this war. Without
such annexation and orders, it can scarcely be pretended that the
remote grievances complained of could have produded war; with
such annexation and orders, it can scarcely be pretended that
the want of such grievances would have prevented it.

But, sir, suppose it be all true, how does it help the President
in his vindication ? Who gave him the right to involve his coun-
try in war for any cause ? How does he possess himself of that
power which the Constitution invests in Congress alone ? Sir, the
President has not gone far enough to make good a justification,
admitting that all he says is true.

WILLIAM L. DAYTON

1677

But we are told that there was just cause for war, and that
it will be prosecuted to obtain peace and indemnity for expenses
and the pecuniary demands of our citizens against Mexico. Sir,
will any gentleman on that or this side of the Chamber tell me
the effect of this very war upon the pecuniary demands referred
to ? Does not the declaration of war of itself cancel all treaty
stipulations, all binding obligations to pay this money ? Where
now is the argument of those gentlemen who so stoutly resisted
the payment of the claims of our citizens for French spoliations
prior to 1800? The whole groundwork of that opposition was
based on the quasi state of war between this country and France,
after those claims accrued. Sir, miserable as was the condition
of these claims on Mexico prior to this war, by reason of the
poverty and distraction of that Government, I hold them tenfold
worse now. If we cancel a treaty stipulation by war, it would
be the duty of the Government to make good to the claimants
their wrong. But where is the man connected with this admin-
istration who thinks of assuming the payment of these debts,
now or hereafter; unless, perchance, in the result of the war we
may receive them ? Then, perhaps, after years of delay, after
the original claimants shall have died, after speculators shall
have bought up the claims, after a long and weary haggling
about the amount due, some kind of half payment by the Gov-
ernment may be agreed upon. This, sir, if we may judge the
future from the past, is about the best we can anticipate for
these claimants; this, for them, will be the result, at best, of the
war.

But, Mr. President, my object was to speak not so much of
the origin as of the object and conduct of this war.

The President, although not the war-making, is the war-
conducting power of our Government. He asks aid for an exist-
ing war. He has the means now to prosecute it in one way,
and declares that he will prosecute it. He seems not to think
of settling this question in reference to the original controversy
— the proper boundary of Texas. Sir, I believe the President
has made this war, made it without right and against right —
still, he has made it; it is upon us and, as it seems to me, we
have no alternative but to aid in its prosecution, or suffer our
arms to be disgraced in the face of the world. If our army
were this side of the Rio Grande, with my present knowledge I
would not vote the President one dollar or one man; but we are

1678

WILLIAM L. DAYTON

in a position where a kind of necessity controls us — a fate hur-
ries us on blindly, we know not where. To withdraw our troops
now would look like a retreat before a superior force, or a tacit
acknowledgment, at least, that we could do nothing. To take up
a line of extended positions within and across the Mexican terri-
tory, and hold them, would require a vast expenditure and force
to be continued for an indefinite time. Sir, I know not whether
we will better ourselves by its direct prosecution, but that is the
recommendation of the Executive • — the constitutional commander-
in-chief of our armies — who is responsible for the conduct of
this war, and I will sustain him, at least with all adequate sup-
plies. But, while I do this, I shall claim the right freely, but
respectfully, to express my opinions. What, then, has the Presi-
dent recommended ? What has he done ? . . .

What have we seen ? The plan of campaign is accomplished.
Our soldiers have crossed the far prairies; they have overrun
New Mexico and California; they have occupied their towns and
cities; they have gained, against odds unknown in modern war-
fare, two pitched battles; they have carried Monterey by storm
and yet cui bono? Sir, the days of Quixotism have passed. I
do not depreciate the value of that reputation which comes of a
<( well foughten field w ; but nations do not, in our day, fight sim-
ply for renown. What other profit have we of this campaign ?
Mexico has suffered less by her defeats than we have by our
victories. Our losses to hers have been as five to one. Already
by battle and climate we have lost from one thousand five hun-
dred to two thousand men! Our army expenses have been mil-
lions per month; hers, by one of her late official documents, are
$368,789 only. And where is it to end? Who can see that end
in the dim future ? . . .

Sir, the whole secret of this miserable plan of campaign is
here. It was not a ' campaign formed primarily to bring us
peace. Peace, (< an honorable peace, w as they phrase it, was
sought, not as an end, but as a means to an end. Acquisition
was the end, peace but the means to attain it. I have regretted
this manifestation on the part of the Executive; one wrong was
scarcely accomplished, when another was begun. Through all
the clouds and darkness which have covered this administration,
shutting out from its view the pathway of its future, one single
star has glimmered in the distance; seen, watched by it, as the
star of its hope and its destiny. Sir, this is a war, not for

WILLIAM L. DAYTON

1679

peace, but for California! Aye, California! and a strip of country
connecting us is its grand object and end. The conduct of the
administration and the documents prove this, in spite of all
official disavowals. From the beginning, it has been pursued
with a boldness, a shamelessness, without parallel. Heretofore,
we have affected some hesitation, a little maiden coyness, about
appropriating that which did not belong to us; even Texas was
at first declined! Alas, sir, each sin but hardens the sinner:

ISSUES AGAINST SLAVERY FORCED BY THE MEXICAN WAR

(From a Speech Delivered in the Senate of the United States, March 22d, 1850)

Mr. President: —

THE war with Mexico has brought with it much territory and
much trouble. This result was early foreseen. It was not
only foreseen, but it was strongly deprecated. We now
have a national estate beyond our national wants or means of
enjoyment, and yet not less the subject of contention among the
heirs. Some gentlemen on this side of the chamber, in anticipa-
tion of the difficulties which now surround us, never assented to
the treaty by which this territory was acquired; they preferred
the hazard of a continuance of the war with Mexico rather than
a peace which should bring territory along with it. There were
a few upon this side of the chamber, and I was of the number,
who preferred, as an alternative, peace, upon the terms then of-
fered, rather than a continuance of the war, with the chances of
a larger amount of territory, further south, at its close. I do not
now, Mr. President, regret my action upon that subject; it is
easy to appreciate difficulties which are around us and upon us,
but it is hard to say what these difficulties would have been had
that war been continued by defeating the treaty, and, as a prob-
able consequence, had the Whig party been defeated at the ensu-
ing election. I hesitate not to believe that the conclusion of that
war under the auspices of a Democratic administration would
have brought with it an additional amount of territory, further
south, and better appropriated to slave labor. It would have in-
creased rather than diminished the difficulties which now sur-
round us. But, Mr. President, the acquisition of this territory

WILLIAM L. DAYTON

was emphatically the act, the policy of the South. This matter,
either for good or for evil, has been forced upon the North, not
only against our will, but against our remonstrance and fears,
ofttimes expressed in this chamber. But the territory is here,
and the next step in the progress of this matter is as to the dis-
position which is to be made of it. That the citizens of the two
sections of the Confederacy have equal rights there, no man can
dispute. But that very equality of right repels the idea that the
minority in interest shall have an absolute control. <( Equality is
equity w ; but a system which shall give to the few (having a
lesser interest) the control of the many is neither equality nor
equity.

There is no controversy, then, in regard to the principle that
our Southern friends have with us, politically and personally,
equal rights in the Territories; but they are no more than equal.
It is the application of this principle of equality which makes the
issue between them and us. The first difficulty grows out of
California. That country has accomplished what, at the last ses-
sion, I did not suppose could be accomplished within so brief a
space. Her condition must have been misunderstood or misrep-
resented. There have been, it would seem, but few, compara-
tively, of her population engaged during the past season in the
mines and washings. Others have met in convention and formed
a constitution which her people have adopted. They have ap-
pointed Senators and elected Representatives in the usual forms;
and they are now here asking admission for California as one of
the States of the Union. The question then occurs, Why shall
not the request be granted ? California was not at the last ses-
sion a State, and that, though not the whole, was a principal ob-
jection to her admission then. That she is now a State de facto
no man can dispute. But, sir, they have incorporated, it seems,
an antislavery clause in their State constitution. This, however,
I understand distinctly from our friends of the South is, to their
minds, no objection to the admission of California into the Union.
I understand that they stand now, as they ever have, upon the
principle of nonintervention; and the fact of the incorporation of
this principle into the California constitution forms of itself no
objection in their minds to the admission of the State into the
Union. That being so, it narrows very much the ground of op-
position. We get rid in this way of those sources of excitement

WILLIAM L. DAYTON

which have pervaded the country from North to South. The
matter is thus brought to stand, not upon a question of right, or
honor, or power, but as a mere question of political expe-
diency. . . .

I hold that slavery is not a political institution of the Federal
Government; that it is not an institution of this Government at
all; it does not exist through or by its action; it has no control
over it in the States to save or abolish it; and that consequently
the Constitution of the Federal Government cannot carry it
where it had not a prior existence. These questions I have ar-
gued before. My opinions are on record, and I do not intend to
repeat them now.

Mr. President, I concur in the sentiment which has been ex-
pressed, that it is time the North and South should understand
each other upon these questions. I desire, therefore, to say that,
as far as I know, the sentiment of the North in reference to the
extension of slavery to free territory is settled, fixed, deter-
mined in its opposition. Its representatives here may sit in quiet
while the South is tempest-tossed; while Southern feeling rolls
in on us here, like foam on the crest of the billow; but, when
the storm shall have passed, when its fury shall have spent
itself, the North will be found just where it was in the begin-
ning— calm, settled, determined in its opposition to the extension
of slavery to free territory. That is my view of the feelings of
the North. This feeling may be sought to be carried out by
different persons through different means. One may be content
only with a positive law passed to prohibit slavery there; another
may content himself with laws of Mexico as they are; and yet
another may say that God has decreed against it, and that it is
useless to re-enact his decrees; but they all have the same ob-
ject, the same purpose. He who used this last expression [Mr.
Webster], which has been much carped at both in this chamber
and by the press, used it, I presume, not in reference to the
re-enactment of the moral laws of God, but of those laws which
God had stamped upon the physical condition, upon the out-
ward form of the universe, and to which the laws of man
could add no sanction. But I may add, in passing, that it is not
customary for human codes to re-enact God's other laws. I be-
lieve no one of us has ever seen the Ten Commandments re-
enacted. Who has seen a statute saying, « Thou shalt not kill, or
v — 106

WILLIAM L. DAYTON

steal, or bear false witness.* The human law does not create,
but recognizes these as crimes, and merely attaches the penalty.
But this is digression. I add that, while we are opposed to the
extension of slavery, we are disposed to carry out these views
only in good feeling and in what we believe to be the spirit of
the Constitution. It has been a leading principle with the Whig
party at the North from the beginning (both in and out of Con-
gress) to oppose the admission of slavery to Territories now free.
But, very unfortunately I must say for us, a party — no, not a
party, but a sect, a political sect — has sprung up in our midst,
that, taking advantage of a good principle in itself, has pushed
it to extremes, connected it with abolition in all its phases, and
has, I fear, done more hurt to us and the cause of human free-
dom than they ever have or ever will do to our adversaries and
the system of slavery.

Mr. Underwood — That is true, no doubt.

Mr. Dayton — Members of that party declaim with great unction
against slavery and with slavery all it comprises; they deprecate as
an unworthy thing that half-and-half virtue which leads us to toler-
ate it for a moment, or tamper with it at all; they denounce it as
weakness, cowardice, because we see the right, and yet dare not
pursue it. Mr. President, I always suspect, not the motives, but
the moral and mental perceptions of that class of men who, for-
getting the possible infirmities of their own little sect of one
idea, hold up their one principle, their single light, perhaps a
farthing candle, with which to view and pronounce upon the
opinions of all mankind. The Whig party North have other
principles besides free-soil; and, without depreciating this, I trust
that the party will live and flourish North and South when free-
soilism and abolitionism, as mere party tests, shall have found
one common grave. It has other and high principles of conserv-
atism, which ultimately must regulate and control its destiny.

But, sir, this free-soil feeling at the North has not been, I
am persuaded, a mere matter of sentiment, as the Senator from
Kentucky [Mr. Clay] seemed to intimate at an early stage in
this debate. He said that he thought he might fairly ask of the
North a greater sacrifice than was claimed in his compromise
resolutions. That with the North it was <( sentiment, sentiment,
sentiment," while with the South it was a question of domestic
security. Sir, if that were so, I grant that the South could call

WILLIAM L. DAYTON ,53-

upon us for greater sacrifices; they could call upon us to sacrifice
everything to their safety. But, sir, in reference to the exten-
sion of slavery to these distant territories, this claim has no sup-
port; it is rather matter of sentiment upon the part of the
South; and if it were sentiment on both sides, the propriety of
concession, and how much, would depend upon the value of the
sentiment advocated by the parties respectively. But the vivid
picture portrayed by the distinguished Senator of a servile insur-
rection, burning dwellings, shrieking wives and children, as ap-
plicable to these distant territories, has no place; or, if a place,
the picture must serve but as a warning, telling us to beware in
season how we transfer to a soil now free institutions pregnant
with such anticipated horrors. They warn us in time of the
responsibility which we incur to posterity if we plant slavery
where it is not. We are about now to lay the foundations of
other commonwealths; the North says it is our duty, as states-
men and as men, to lay their foundations in such wise that our
children and our children's children, to the remotest generation,
*may rise up and call us blessed!" — that they may not at
some distant day say of us, in bitterness and in sorrow, "The
stone which the builder did refuse,'* the same should have been
"the chief of the corner." This is the origin of Northern feel-
ing; it is no sickly sentiment, but judgment, a sound discretion
which induces the feeling of the North upon these questions.
Sir, draw the slave and free line from the ocean to the Missis-
sippi, and mark the difference between the two sides. "Com-
parisons are odious.1* I have no wish to make them, but I
know the magnanimity of Kentucky will excuse me. Kentucky,
in 1790, had a free population of sixty thousand souls. The sun
shines upon no better soil, or stronger hands or stouter hearts
than her own. Ohio, her neighbor, with no better soil, if so
good, and no superior facilities then or now, was then an un-
broken, howling wilderness. Fifty years have rolled round.
Kentucky has a free population of less than six hundred thou-
sand. Ohio has a free population of one million and a half! The
same difference exists in reference to their productions, agri-
cultural, mechanical, and manufactured. I ask, whence comes
the difference ? It comes, sir, from the single fact that Ken-
tucky carries dead weight. She has been paralyzed in her
efforts by the crushing influence of one institution. I do not
wonder that her people are attached to it; he who has been

WILLIAM L. DAYTON

bred in its midst, nursed by the slave in infancy, followed by
him in manhood, looked after by him in age — he may be un-
willing to give up the comforts which attend this kind of
domestic servitude. But, sir, when we are laying the founda-
tion of empires, the question is not how a few may live in
ease, but the question is, how the many shall best live, increase,
beautify, and fructify the earth.

STHENE, ,

'"' - "\

t&m&er an/re /£/ ///////AI v

ne s'uu

in g

WOSTHENi

-, after the Design f>y Bonneville.

• the biographers of Demosthenes, his father owned *a
manufactory of swords, and another of upholstery, worth about
$i7,5<x>. M In the legend under this portrait, designed in tin
of !•' re-nth Jacobinism, he is called «the enemy of tyrants, M and the "
manufacturer " of j>olite biography is popularized as a blacksmith.

1685

DEMOSTHENES

(384-322 B.C.)

}HE Oration on the Crown has been called the greatest oration
of the world's greatest orator. If it be so, it is because
Demosthenes is defending civilization in defending himself
as the champion of Athenian autonomy and liberty. The Athens of
his day represented all that was highest in intellect, and in the ap-
plication of intellect to art, to science, to philosophy, to moral force
in government. Against it, threatening its overthrow, was the blind
desire of empire, the primitive instinct of coercion, the savage pride
in dominating the strong and subjugating the weak, represented by
Philip and his Macedonians. Athens, a small State, forced to rely
almost wholly on intellectual resources, had by virtue of them be-
come the most conspicuous nation in Europe. Athenian diplomacy,
the subtle, intangible, all-pervading forces of mind which Demos-
thenes and his work enable later generations to understand as essen-
tially Attic qualities, influenced not only the policies of Greece, but
those of every civilized people in the known world.

The Greece which produced and energized Demosthenes had been
itself energized by two great ideas — the ideals of Athens and of
Sparta. The one was of grace, the other of strength. The Athe-
nian believed that he ought to develop all his faculties and enjoy
them. The Spartan held life useless unless it developed character
at the expense of .enjoyment. The Athenian was incredibly quick,
subtle, aesthetic. The Spartan was strong, simple, self-denying. So
opposite in their virtues they had the same fundamental weakness —
a defective sense of justice. Of the Athenian character as it had
reached its logical climax in the time of Demosthenes, Rufus Choate
shows a just appreciation when he writes: —

« Whether Republics have usually perished from injustice need not be de-
bated. One there was, the most renowned of all, that certainly did so. The
injustice practiced by the Athens of the age of Demosthenes upon its citizens,
and suffered to be practiced by one another, was as marvelous as the capaci-
ties of its dialect, as the eloquence by which its masses were regaled, and
swayed this way and that as clouds, as waves, — marvelous as the long ban-
quet of beauty in which they reveled, — as their love of Athens, and their
passion for glory. There was not one day in the whole public life of Demos-
thenes when the fortune, the good name, the civil existence of any consider-
able man was safer there than it would have been at Constantinople or Cairo

DEMOSTHENES

under the very worst forms of Turkish rule. There was a sycophant to
accuse, a demagogue to prosecute, a fickle, selfish, necessitous court — no court
at all, only a commission of some hundreds or thousands from the public
assembly sitting in the sunshine, directly interested in the cause — to pro-
nounce judgment. And he who rose rich and honored might be flying at
night for his life to some Persian or Macedonian outpost, to die by poison on
his way in the Temple of Neptune. »

This is the central truth in the life of Greece as it is in that of
the greatest Greek orator and statesman. It must be kept in mind
in reading every period of the ( Oration on the Crown, > that then, as
always when he spoke on public affairs, the patriot staked fortune,
honor, life, on his words. Between ^Eschines, the rival of Demosthe-
nes, and Demosthenes himself, the issue is always possibly one of life
and death — certainly of exile for the loser. But with Demosthenes,
it is infinitely higher and broader. He feels that in controling
Athens he is moving Greece and the world. He is staking every-
thing for his country and braving for his countrymen the certainty
of ingratitude, treachery, and persecution to save them and their civ-
ilization from being overcome by encircling and menacing barbarism.

As he came forward to deliver the Oration on the Crown,* Demos-
thenes stood for fruitless patriotism, defeated by the injustice of
those it would save. Neither Sparta nor Athens was longer com-
petent to lead Europe. The Macedonians, half Greek, half barbarian,
represented the logic of the situation created by the fraud and force
of the long struggle for the <( hegemony w of Greece. The sovereignty
of intellect which Athens might have held against the world was
challenged. It was now a question of the Macedonian phalanx
against oratory addressed to a people so aesthetic as to be capable of
protesting loudly against the use of a grave accent in place of an
acute, but with none of that governing public conscience through
which alone moral force can exercise itself.

The ( Oration on the Crown * seems to be largely personal and in
some measure egotistical, but in defending himself Demosthenes, at-
tacked by the Macedonian party at Athens, feels that he is still de-
fending Athens against Macedon, liberty against Philip, civilization
against barbarism. In this feeling he was justified. He had led Athe-
nian opposition to the aggressions of Macedon from the first, and in
338 B. C., when Philip of Macedon so disastrously defeated the Athenians
and their allies at Chaeronea, Demosthenes, one of the officials in
charge of the walls of Athens, had used his own money freely to re-
pair them. After the panic following the battle was over, Ktesiphon,
on behalf of the friends of Demosthenes and the opponents of Philip,
moved that the orator <( should be presented with a golden crown
and that a proclamation should be made in the theatre at the great

DEMOSTHENES

1687

Dionysian festival, at the performance of the new tragedies, announc-
ing that Demosthenes was rewarded by the people with a golden
crown for his integrity, for the good-will which he had invariably
displayed towards the Greeks and towards the people of Athens, and
also for his magnanimity, and because he had ever both by word
and deed promoted the interests of the people and been zealous to
do all the good in his power."

Rallying behind JEschines, the Macedonian party attacked Ktesi-
phon as a means of ruining Demosthenes. They alleged that the
measure he proposed was unlawful; first, because it was unlawful to
make a false allegation in any public document; second, that it was
unlawful to vote a crown to any official who had still a report to
make of his official conduct; and third, that the Dionysian festival
was not lawfully the place for presenting crowns. Of course, the case
turned on the question of whether or not Ktesiphon in moving to crown
Demosthenes as a patriot and public benefactor had moved to place
a lie in the archives of Athens. Demosthenes was thus put on trial
for his Philippics, for his Olynthaics, for all the other orations he
had delivered against Philip and the Macedonian movement since he
began his crusade twenty years before (351-352 B.C.). After the ac-
cusation had been preferred against Ktesiphon, it was allowed to rest
seven years (until 330 B. C.). When trial was forced, Philip was dead,
and Alexander being at the height of his successes, the cause of
Demosthenes seemed hopeless. Nevertheless, all Greece, understand-
ing that the prosecution was not against Ktesiphon, but against
Demosthenes as the representative of the old Greek idea of small
independent states in friendly alliance, watched the case with breath-
less interest. When Demosthenes won it, ^Eschines went into exile,
but in 324 Demosthenes was himself exiled by the Macedonian party,
and in 322 he took poison to escape death at their hands.

He was born at Paeania, Attica, 384 (385 ?), B. C., and died at
Calauria in the Temple of Neptune where he had taken sanctuary
from Macedonian pursuit, 322 B. C. He was not a philosopher or an
essayist like Cicero, whose all-embracing mind considered nothing in
the visible or invisible universe foreign to it. He was a patriot, a
statesman, a great thinker, because his sympathies with his country
and what it stood for made him so. His style may seem unadorned,
but that is merely another way of calling it Attic. Indeed, it was ob-
jected by one of his contemporaries that he allowed himself more
ornament than the laws of good taste warranted. No one in modern
times will make such a complaint of his direct and rapid sentences,
compelled as they are by the earnestness of one of the greatest in-
tellects in the history of the world.

DEMOSTHENES

THE ORATION ON THE CROWN

(Delivered at Athens, 330 B.C., in Defense of Ktesiphon — from the Transla-
tion of Kennedy. Following the plan of the work under which the < World's
Best Orations > are published in full, the < Oration on the Crown > is given
complete, as are also the Second Olynthaic, the Second Philippic, and
the < Oration on the Peace. >)

I BEGIN, men of Athens, by praying to every god and goddess
that the same good-will which I have ever cherished toward

the commonwealth and all of you, may be requited to me
on the present trial. I pray likewise — and this specially con-
cerns yourselves, your religion, and your honor — that the gods
may put it in your minds not to take counsel of my oppo-
nent touching the manner in which I am to be heard, — that
would indeed be cruel! — but of the laws and of your oath,
wherein (besides the other obligations) it is prescribed that you
shall hear both sides alike. This means not only that you must
pass no pre-condemnation, not only that you must extend your
good-will equally to both, but also that you must allow the par-
ties to adopt such order and course of defense as they severally
choose and prefer.

Many advantages hath ^Eschines over me on this trial; and
two especially, men of Athens. First, my risk in the contest is
not the same. It is assuredly not the same for me to forfeit
your regard, as for my adversary not to succeed in his indict-
ment. To me — but I will say nothing untoward at the outset
of my address. The prosecution, however, is play to him. My
second disadvantage is the natural disposition of mankind to take
pleasure in hearing invective and accusation, and to be annoyed
by those who praise themselves. To ^Eschines is assigned the
part which gives pleasure ; that which (I may fairly say) is offen-
sive to all is left for me. And if, to escape from this, I make
no mention of what I have done, I shall appear to be without
defense against his charges, without proof of my claims to honor;
whereas, if I proceed to give an account of my conduct and
measures, I shall be forced to speak frequently of myself. I will
endeavor, then, to do so with all becoming modesty; what I am
driven to by the necessity of the case will be fairly chargeable
to my opponent who has instituted such a prosecution.

I think, men of the jury, you will all agree that I, as well as
Ktesiphon, am a party to this proceeding, and that it is a matter

DEMOSTHENES ,6g9

of no less concern to me. It is painful and grievous to be de-
prived of anything, especially by the act of one's enemy; but
your good -will and affection are the heaviest loss, precisely as
they are the greatest prize to gain.

Such being the matters at stake in this cause, I conjure and
implore you all alike to hear my defense to the charge in that
fair manner which the laws prescribe — laws to which their
author, Solon, a man friendly to you and to popular rights,
thought that validity should be given, not only by the recording
of them, but by the oath of you the jurors; not that he dis-
trusted you, as it appears to me; but, seeing that the charges
and calumnies, wherein the prosecutor is powerful by being the
first speaker, cannot be got over by the defendant unless each
of you jurors, observing his religious obligation, shall with like
favor receive the arguments of the last speaker, and lend an
equal and impartial ear to both, before he determines upon the
whole case.

As I am, it appears, on this day to render an account both
of my private life and my public measures, I would fain, as in
the outset, call the gods to my aid, and in your presence I im-
plore them, first, that the good-will which I have ever cherished
toward the commonwealth and all of you may be fully requited
to me on the present trial; next, that they may direct you to
such a decision upon this indictment as will conduce to your
common honor and to the good conscience of each individual.

Had ^Eschines confined his charge to the subject of the pros-
ecution, I, too, would have proceeded at once to my justification
of the decree. But since he has wasted no fewer words in the
discussion of other matters, in most of them calumniating me, I
deem it both necessary and just, men of Athens, to begin by
shortly adverting to these points that none of you may be in-
duced by extraneous arguments to shut your ears against my
defense to the indictment.

To all his scandalous abuse of my private life, observe my
plain and honest answer. If you know me to be such as he al-
leged— for I have lived nowhere else but among you — let not
my voice be heard, however transcendent my statesmanship!
Rise up this instant and condemn me! But if, in your opinion
and judgment, I am far better and of better descent than my
adversary; if (to speak without offense) I am not inferior, I or
mine, to any respectable citizen, then give no credit to him for

1690

DEMOSTHENES

his other statements, — it is plain they were all equally fictions, —
but to me let the same good-will, which you have uniformly ex-
hibited upon many former trials, be manifested now. With all
your malice, ^Eschines, it was very simple to suppose that I
should turn from the discussion of measures and policy to notice
your scandal. I will do no such thing; I am not so crazed.
Your lies and calumnies about my political life I will examine
forthwith; for that loose ribaldry I shall have a word hereafter,
if the jury desire to hear it.

The crimes whereof I am accused are many and grievous:
for some of them the laws enact heavy — most severe penalties.
The scheme of this present proceeding includes a combination of
spiteful insolence, insult, railing, aspersion, and everything of the
kind ; while for the said charges and accusations, if they were true,
the state has not the means of inflicting an adequate punish-
ment, or anything like it. For it is not right to debar another
of access to the people and privilege of speech; moreover, to do
so by way of malice and insult — by heaven! is neither honest,
nor constitutional, nor just. If the crimes which he saw me
committing against the state were as heinous as he so tragically
gave out, he ought to have enforced the penalties of the law
against them at the time — if he saw me guilty of an impeachable
offense, — by impeaching and so bringing me to trial before you;
if moving illegal decrees, by indicting me for them. For surely,
if he can prosecute Ktesiphon on my account, he would not have
forborne to indict me myself, had he thought he could convict
me. In short, whatever else he saw me doing to your prejudice,
whether mentioned or not mentioned in his catalogue of slander,
there are laws for such things, and punishments, and trials, and
judgments, with sharp and severe penalties; all of which he
might have enforced against me: and had he done so — had he
thus pursued the proper method with me, his charges would
have been consistent with his conduct. But now he has declined
the straightforward and just course, avoided all proofs of guilt
at the time, and, after this long interval, gets up, to play his part
withal, a heap of accusation, ribaldry, and scandal. Then he
arraigns me, but prosecutes the defendant. His hatred of me
he makes the prominent part of the whole contest; yet, without
having ever met me upon that ground, he openly seeks to de-
prive a third party of his privileges. Now, men of Athens,
besides all the other arguments that may be urged in Ktesiphon's

DEMOSTHENES ,5^,

behalf, this, methinks, may very fairly be alleged — that we should
try our own quarrel by ourselves; not leave our private dispute,
and look what third party we can damage. That surely were
the height of injustice.

It may appear from what has been said, that all his charges
are alike unjust and unfounded in truth. Yet I wish to examine
them separately, and especially his calumnies about the peace
and the embassy, where he attributed to me the acts of himself
and Philocrates. It is necessary also, and perhaps proper, men of
Athens, to remind you how affairs stood at those times, that you
may consider every single measure in reference to the occasion.

When the Phocian War had broken out, — not through me, for
I had not then commenced public life, — you were in this posi-
tion: you wished the Phocians to be saved, though you saw they
were not acting right — and would have been glad for the The-
bans to suffer anything, with whom for a just reason you were
angry, for they had not borne with moderation their good for-
tune at Leuctra. The whole of Peloponnesus was divided: they
that hated the Lacedaemonians were not powerful enough to de-
stroy them, and they that ruled before by Spartan influence
were not masters of the States. Among them, as among the rest
of the Greeks, there was a sort of unsettled strife and confusion.
Philip, seeing this, — it was not difficult to see, — lavished bribes
upon the traitors in every State, embroiled and stirred them all
up against each other; and so, by the errors and follies of the
rest, he was strengthening himself and growing up to the ruin of
all. But when every one saw that the then overbearing, but now
unfortunate, Thebans, harassed by so long a war, must of neces-
sity have recourse to you, Philip, to prevent this and obstruct
the union of the States, offered to you peace, to them succor.
What helped him then almost to- surprise you in a voluntary
snare ? The cowardice, shall I call it ? or ignorance — or both —
of the other Greeks; who, while you were waging a long and
incessant war, and that too for their common benefit, as the
event has shown, assisted you neither with money nor men, nor
anything else whatsoever. You, being justly and naturally of-
fended with them, lent a willing ear to Philip.

The peace then granted was through such means brought
about, not through me, as JEschines calumniously charged. The
criminal and corrupt practices of these men during the treaty
will be found on fair examination to be the cause of our present

1692

DEMOSTHENES

condition. The whole matter I am for truth's sake discussing
and going through; for, let there appear to be ever so much
criminality in these transactions, it is surely nothing to me. The
first who spoke and mentioned the subject of peace was Aristo-
demus, the actor; the seconder and mover, fellow-hireling for
that purpose with the prosecutor, was Philocrates the Agnusian
— your associate, JEschines, not mine, though you should burst
with lying. Their supporters — from whatever motives — I pass
that by for the present — were Eubulus and Cephisophon. I had
nothing to do with it.

Notwithstanding these facts, which I have stated exactly ac-
cording to the truth, he ventured to assert — to such a pitch of
impudence had he come — that I, besides being author of the
peace, had prevented the country making it in a general council
with the Greeks. Why you — I know not what name you de-
serve!— when you saw me robbing the state of an advantage
and connection so important as you described just now, did you
ever express indignation ? Did you come forward to publish and
proclaim what you now charge me with ? If, indeed, I had been
bribed by Philip to prevent the conjunction of the Greeks, it was
your business not to be silent, but to cry out, to protest, and in-
form the people. But you never did so; your voice was never
heard to such a purpose; and no wonder; for at that time no
embassy had been sent to any of the Greeks; they had all been
tested long before, and not a word of truth upon the subject
has ^Eschines spoken.

Besides, it is the country that he most traduces by his false-
hoods. For, if you were at the same time calling on the Greeks
to take arms, and sending your own embassadors to treat with
Philip for peace, you were performing the part of an Eurybatus,
not the act of a commonwealth, or of honest men. But it is
false, it is false. For what purpose could ye have sent for them
at that period ? For peace ? They all had it. For war ? You
were yourselves deliberating about peace. It appears, therefore,
I was not the adviser or the author of the original peace; and
none of his other calumnies against me are shown to be true.

Observe again, after the state had concluded the peace, what
line of conduct each of us adopted. Hence, you will understand
who it was that co-operated in everything with Philip; who that
acted in your behalf, and sought the advantage of the common-
wealth.

DEMOSTHENES

I moved in the council that our embassadors should sail in-
stantly for whatever place they heard Philip was in, and receive
his oath; they would not, however, notwithstanding my resolu-
tion. What was the effect of this, men of Athens ? I will ex-
plain. It was Philip's interest that the interval before the oaths
should be as long as possible; yours, that it should be as short.
Why ? Because you discontinued all your warlike preparations,
not only from the day of swearing peace, but from the day that
you conceived hopes of it; a thing which Philip was from the
beginning studious to contrive, believing — rightly enough — that
whatever of our possessions he might take before the oath of
ratification, he should hold securely, as none would break the
peace on such account. I, men of Athens, foreseeing and weigh-
ing these consequences, moved the decree to sail for whatever
place Philip was in, and receive his oath without delay, so that
your allies, the Thracians, might be in possession of the places
which ^Eschines ridiculed just now (Serrium, Myrtium, and Er-
gisce), at the time of swearing the oaths; and that Philip might
not become master of Thrace by securing the posts of vantage,
nor provide himself with plenty of money and troops to facilitate
his further designs. Yet this decree he neither mentions nor
reads, but reproaches me, because, as councilor, I thought proper
to introduce the embassadors. Why, what should I have done ?
Moved not to introduce men who were come for the purpose of
conferring with you ? or ordered the manager not to assign them
places at the theatre ? They might have had places for their
two obols if the resolution had not been moved. Was it my
duty to guard the petty interests of the state, and have sold our
main interests like these men ? Surely not. Take and read me
this decree, which the prosecutor, knowing it well, passed over.
Read.

THE DECREE

wln the archonship of Mnesiphilus, on the thirteenth of Hecatom-
baeon, in the presidency of the Pandionian tribe, Demosthenes, son of
Demosthenes of Paeania, moved, — Whereas Philip has sent embassa-
dors for peace, and hath agreed upon articles of treaty, it is resolved
by the Council and People of Athens, in order that the peace voted
in the first assembly may be ratified, to choose forthwith from the
whole body of Athenians five embassadors; and that the persons
elected do repair, without any delay, wheresoever they shall ascertain
that Philip is, and as speedily as may be exchange oaths with him,

1 694

DEMOSTHENES

according to the articles agreed on between him and the Athenian
people, comprehending the 'allies of either party. For embassadors
were chosen, Eubulus of Anaphlestus, ^Sschines of Cothocidae, Cephi-
sophon of Rhamnus, Democrates of Phlya, Cleon of Cothocidae. w

Notwithstanding that I had passed this decree for the ad-
vantage of Athens, not that of Philip, our worthy embassadors so
little regarded it as to sit down in Macedonia three whole
months, until Philip returned from Thrace after entirely sub-
jugating the country, although they might in ten days, or rather
in three or four, have reached the Hellespont and saved the fort-
resses, by receiving his oath before he reduced them: for he
would never have touched them in our presence, or we should
not have sworn him; and thus he would have lost the peace, and
not have obtained both the peace and the fortresses.

Such was the first trick of Philip, the first corrupt act of these
accursed miscreants, in the embassy: for which I avow that I was
and am and ever will be at war and variance with them. But
mark another and still greater piece of villainy immediately after.
When Philip had sworn to the peace, having secured Thrace
through these men disobeying my decree, he again bribes them
not to leave Macedonia, until he had got all ready for his expe-
dition against the Phocians. His fear was, if they reported to
you his design and preparation for marching, you might sally
forth, sail round with your galleys to Thermopylae as before, and
block up the strait: his desire, that, the moment you received the
intelligence from them, he should have passed Thermopylas, and
you be unable to do anything. And in such terror and anxiety
was Philip, lest, notwithstanding he had gained these advan-
tages, if you voted succor before the destruction of the Phocians,
his enterprise should fail; he hires this despicable fellow, no
longer in common with the other embassadors, but by himself
individually, to make that statement and report to you, by which
everything was lost.

I conjure and beseech you, men of Athens, throughout the
trial to remember this, that, if JEschines in his charge had not
traveled out of the indictment, neither would I have spoken a
word irrelevant; but since he has resorted to every species both
of accusation and calumny, it is necessary for me to reply briefly
to each of his charges.

What, then, were the statements made by ^Eschines, through
which everything was lost ? That you should not be alarmed

DEMOSTHENES

by Philip's having passed Thermopylae — that all would be as you
desired, if you kept quiet; and in two or three days you would
hear he was their friend to whom he had come as an enemy,
and their enemy to whom he had come as a friend — it was not
words that cemented attachments (such was his solemn phrase),
but identity of interest; and it was the interest of all alike,
Philip, the Phocians, and you, to be relieved from the harshness
and insolence of the Thebans. His assertions were heard by
some with pleasure, on account of the hatred which then sub-
sisted against the Thebans. But what happened directly, almost
immediately, afterward ? The wretched Phocians were destroyed,
their cities demolished; you that kept quiet, and trusted to
^Eschines, were shortly bringing in your effects out of the coun-
try, while JEschines received gold; and yet more — while you got
nothing but your enmity with the Thebans and Thessalians, Philip
won their gratitude for what he had done. To prove what I say,
read me the decree of Callisthenes, and the letter of Philip, from
both of which these particulars will be clear to you. Read.

THE DECREE

*In the archonship of Mnesiphilus, an extraordinary assembly hav-
ing been convened by the Generals, with the sanction of the Presidents
and the Council, on the twenty-first of Maemacterion, Callisthenes,
son of Eteonicus of Phalerum, moved: — No Athenian shall on any
pretense sleep in the country, but all in the city and Piraeus, except
those who are stationed in the garrisons; and they shall every one
keep the posts assigned to them, without absenting themselves by
night or day. Whosoever disobeys this decree, shall be amenable to
the penalties of treason, unless he can show that some necessity
prevented him; the judges of such necessity shall be the General of
Infantry, and he of the Finance Department, and the Secretary of the
Council. All effects shall be conveyed out of the country as speedily
as may be ; those that are within a hundred and twenty furlongs into
the city and Piraeus, those that are beyond a hundred and twenty
furlongs to Eleusis and Phyle and Aphidna and Rhamnus and Sun-
ium. On the motion of Callisthenes of Phalemm."

Was it with such expectations you concluded the peace ?
Were such the promises this hireling made you ? Come, read
the letter which Philip sent after this to Athens.

1696

DEMOSTHENES

THE LETTER OF PHILIP

w Philip, king of Macedonia, to the Council and People of Athens,
greeting. Ye know that we have passed Thermopylae, and reduced
Phocis to submission, and put garrisons in the towns that opened
their gates; those that resisted we took by storm, and razed to the
ground, enslaving their inhabitants. Hearing, however, that ye are
preparing to assist them, I have written unto you, that ye may
trouble yourselves no farther in the business. For it seems to me,
ye are acting altogether unreasonably; having concluded peace, and
nevertheless taking the field, and that too when the Phocians are not
comprehended in our treaty. Wherefore, if ye abide not by your en-
gagements, ye will gain no advantage but that of being the aggres-
sors. *

You hear how plainly, in his letter to you, he declares and
asserts to his own allies — <(all this I have done against the will
of the Athenians, and in their despite; therefore if ye are wise,
ye Thebans and Thessalians, ye will regard them as enemies,
and put confidence in me*; not writing in such words, but
meaning so to be understood. And by these means he carried
them away with him, insomuch that they had neither foresight
nor sense of the consequences, but suffered him to get every-
thing into his power; hence the misfortunes under which those
wretched people at present are. The agent and auxiliary who
helped to win for him such confidence, — who brought false
reports here and cajoled you, — he it is who now bewails the suf-
ferings of the Thebans and dilates upon them so pathetically, he
himself being the cause both of these calamities, and those in
Phocis, and all the rest which the Greeks have sustained. Truly
must you, ^schines, grieve at these events, and compassionate
the Thebans, when you hold property in Boeotia and farm their
lands; and I rejoice at a work whose author immediately required
me to be delivered into his hands.

But I have fallen upon a subject which it may be more con-
venient to discuss by and by. I will return then to my proofs,
showing how the iniquities of these men have brought about the
present state of things.

When you had been deceived by Philip through the agency
of these men, who sold themselves in the embassies, and reported
not a word of truth to you — when the unhappy Phocians had
been deceived and their cities destroyed — what followed? The

DEMOSTHENES

1697

despicable Thessalians and stupid Thebans looked on Philip as a
friend, a benefactor, a savior: he was everything with them —
not a syllable would they hear from any one to the contrary.
You, though regarding his acts with suspicion and anger, still
observed the peace; for you could have done nothing alone.
The rest of the Greeks, cheated and disappointed like yourselves,
gladly observed the peace, though they also had in a manner
been attacked for a long time. For when Philip was marching
about, subduing Illyrians and Triballians and some also of the
Greeks, and gaining many considerable accessions of power, and
certain citizens of the states (^Eschines among them) took ad-
vantage of the peace to go there and be corrupted, all people
then, against whom he was making such preparations, were at-
tacked. If they perceived it not, that is another question, no
concern of mine. I was forever warning and protesting, both at
Athens and wheresoever I was sent. But the States were dis-
eased; one class in their politics and measures being venal and
corrupt, while the multitude of private men either had no fore-
sight, or were caught with the bait of present ease and idleness;
and all were under some such influence, only they imagined each
that the mischief would not approach themselves, but that by the
peril of others they might secure their own safety when they
chose. The result, I fancy, has been that the people, in return
for their gross and unseasonable indolence, have lost their liberty:
the statesmen, who imagined they were selling everything but
themselves, discovered they had sold themselves first; for, instead
of friends, as they were named during the period of bribery, they
are now called parasites and miscreants and the like befitting
names. Justly. For no man, O Athenians, spends money for the
traitor's benefit, or, when he has got possession of his purchase,
employs the traitor to advise him in future proceedings: else
nothing could have been more fortunate than a traitor. But it
is not so — it never could be — it is far otherwise! When the
aspirant for power has gained his object, he is master also of
those that sold it; and then — then, I say, knowing their base-
ness, he loathes and mistrusts and spurns them.

Consider only — for though the time of the events is past, the
time for understanding them is ever present to the wise: Las-
thenes was called the friend of Philip for a while, until he be-
trayed Olynthus; Timolaus for a while, until he destroyed Thebes;
Rudicus and Simus of Larissa for a while, until they brought
v — 107

1698

DEMOSTHENES

Thessaly under Philip's power. Since then the world has become
full of traitors expelled and insulted and suffering every possible
calamity. How fared Aristratus in Sicyon ? how Perilaus in Me-
gara ? Are they not outcasts ? Hence, one may evidently see, it
is the vigilant defender of his country, the strenuous opponent
of such men, who secures to you traitors and hirelings, ^Eschines,
the opportunity of getting bribes; through the number of those
that oppose your wishes you are in safety and in pay, for had it
depended on yourselves you would have perished long ago.

Much more could I say about those transactions, yet methinks
too much has been said already. The fault is my adversary's,
for having spurted over me the dregs, I may say, of his own
wickedness and iniquities, of which I was obliged to clear myself
to those who are younger than the events. You, too, have prob-
ably been disgusted, who knew this man's venality before I spoke
a word. He calls it friendship, indeed, and said somewhere in
his speech — <(the man who reproaches me with the friendship of
Alexander. * I reproach you with the friendship of Alexander!
Whence gotten, or how merited ? Neither Philip's friend nor
Alexander's should I ever call you; I am not so mad; unless we
are to call reapers and other hired laborers the friends of those
who hire them. That, however, is not so — how could it be ? It
is nothing of the kind. Philip's hireling I called you once, and
Alexander's I call you now. So do all these men. If you dis-
believe me, ask them; or rather I will do it for you. Athenians!
is JEschines, think ye, the hireling or the friend of Alexander?
You hear what they say.

I now proceed to my defense upon the indictment itself, and
to the account of my own measures, that JEschines may hear,
though he knows already, on what I found my title both to
these which have been decreed and to far greater rewards. Take
and read me the indictment itself.

THE INDICTMENT

<( In the archonship of Chasrondas, on the sixth of Elaphebolion,
JEschines, son of Atrometus of Cothocidae, preferred before the archon
an indictment against Ktesiphon, son of Leosthenes of Anaphlystus,
for an illegal measure: for that he proposed a decree against law, to
wit, that it was right to crown Demosthenes, son of Demosthenes of
Paeania, with a golden crown and to proclaim in the theatre at the
great Dionysian festival, at the exhibition of the new tragedies, that

DEMOSTHENES

1699

the people crown Demosthenes, son of Demosthenes of Paeania, with a
golden crown, on account of his virtue, and of the good-will which he
has constantly cherished toward all the Greeks as well as toward the
people of Athens, and of his integrity, and because he has constantly
by word and deed promoted the advantage of the people, and is zealous
to do whatever good he can : all which clauses are false and illegal ;
the laws enacting : firstly, that no false allegations shall be entered in
the public records; secondly, that an accountable officer shall not be
crowned (but Demosthenes is a conservator of the walls, and has
charge of the theoric fund); thirdly, that the crown shall not be pro-
claimed in the theatre at the Dionysian festival, on the new exhibi-
tion of tragedies, but if the council confer a crown, it shall be pub-
lished in the council-hall, if the people, in the Pnyx at the assembly.
Penalty, fifty talents. Witnesses to the summons, Cephisophon, son
of Cephisophon of Rhamnus, Cleon, son of Cleon of Cothocidae. *

The clauses of the decree which he prosecutes are these, men
of Athens. Now from these very clauses I think I shall immedi-
ately make it clear to you that my whole defense will be just;
for I shall take the charges in the same order as my adversary,
and discuss them all one by one, without a single intentional
omission.

With respect to the statement, "that I have constantly by
word and deed promoted the advantage of the people, and am
zealous to do whatever good I can," and the praising me on such
grounds, your judgment, I conceive, must depend on my public
acts; from an examination of which it will be discovered whether
what Ktesiphon has alleged concerning me is true and proper, or
false. As to his proposing to give the crown without adding
"when he has passed his accounts," and to proclaim the crown
in the theatre, I imagine that this also relates to my political
conduct, whether I am worthy of the crown and the public pro-
clamation, or not. However, I deem it necessary to produce the
laws which justified the defendant in proposing such clauses.

Thus honestly and simply, men of Athens, have I resolved to
conduct my defense. I now proceed to my own actual measures.
And let no one suppose that I wander from the indictment, if I
touch upon Grecian questions and affairs: he who attacks that
clause of the decree, "that by word and deed I have promoted
your good" — he who has indicted this for being false — he, I
say, has rendered the discussion of my whole policy pertinent
and necessary to the charge. Moreover, there being many de-

1700

DEMOSTHENES

partments of political action, I chose that which belonged to
Grecian affairs: therefore, I am justified in drawing my proofs
from them.

The conquests which Philip had got and held before I com-
menced life as a statesman and orator, I shall pass over, as I
think they concern not me. Those that he was baffled in from
the day of my entering on such duties, I will call to your recol-
lection, and render an account of them; premising one thing
only — Philip started, men of Athens, with a great advantage.
It happened that among the Greeks — not some, but all alike —
there sprang up a crop of traitors and venal wretches, such as
in the memory of man had never been before. These he got
for his agents and supporters: the Greeks, already ill-disposed
and unfriendly to each other, he brought into a still worse state,
deceiving this people, making presents to that, corrupting others
in every way; and he split them into many parties, when they
had all one interest, to prevent his aggrandizement. While the
Greeks were all in such a condition, — in such ignorance of the
gathering and growing mischief, — you have to consider, men of
Athens, what policy and measures it became the commonwealth
to adopt, and of this to receive a reckoning from me; for the
man who assumed that post in the administration was I.

Ought she, ^Eschines, to have cast off her spirit and dignity,
and, in the style of Thessalians and Dolopians, helped to acquire
for Philip the dominion of Greece, and extinguished the honors
and rights of our ancestors? Or, if she did not this, — which
would indeed have been shameful, — was it right that what she
saw would happen if unprevented, and was for a long time,
it seems, aware of, she should suffer to come to pass ?

I would gladly ask the severest censurer of our acts, with what
party he would have wished the commonwealth to side, — with
those who contributed to the disgraces and disasters of the Greeks,
the party, we may say, of the Thessalians and their followers,
or those who permitted it all for the hope of selfish advantage,
among whom we may reckon the Arcadians, Messenians, and
Argives ? But many of them, or rather all, have fared worse
than ourselves. If Philip after his victory had immediately
marched off and kept quiet, without molesting any either of his
own allies or of the Greeks in general, still they that opposed
not his enterprises would have merited some blame and re-
proach. But when he has stripped all alike of their dignity,

DEMOSTHENES ,7O|

their authority, their liberty, — nay, even of their constitutions,
where he was able, — can it be doubted that you took the most
glorious course in pursuance of my counsels?

But I return to the question — What should the common-
wealth, ^Eschines, have done, when she saw Philip establishing
an empire and dominion over Greece ? Or what was your states-
man to advise or move ? — I, a statesman at Athens ? — for this is
most material — I who knew that from the earliest time, until the
day of my own mounting the platform, our country had ever striven
for precedency and honor and renown, and expended more blood
and treasure for the sake of glory and the general weal than the
rest of the Greeks had expended on their several interests ? —
who saw that in the strife for power and empire, Philip himself,
with whom we were contending, had had his eye cut out, his
collar bone fractured, his hand and leg mutilated, and was ready
and willing to sacrifice any part of his body that fortune chose
to take, provided he could live with the remainder in honor and
glory? Hardly will any one venture to say this — that it became
a man bred at Pella, then an obscure and inconsiderable place,
to possess such inborn magnanimity as to aspire to the mastery
of Greece and form the project in his mind, while you, who were
Athenians, day after day in speeches and in dramas reminded of
the virtue of your ancestors, should have been so naturally base
as of your own free will and accord to surrender to Philip the
liberty of Greece. No man will say this!

The only course then that remained was a just resistance to
all his attacks upon you. Such course you took from the be-
ginning, properly and becomingly; and I assisted by motions
and counsels during the period of my political life: — I acknowl-
edge it. But what should I have done ? I put this question to
you, dismissing all else: Amphipolis, Pydna, Potidaea, Halonnesus
— I mention none of them: Serrium, Doriscus, the ravaging of
Peparethus, and any similar wrongs which the country has
suffered — I know not even of their occurrence. You, indeed,
said that by talking of these I had brought the people into a
quarrel, although the resolutions respecting them were moved by
Eubulus and Aristophon and Diopithes — not by me, you ready
utterer of what suits your purpose! Neither will I speak of
these now. But I ask — the man who was appropriating to him-
self Eubcea, and making it a fortress against Attica, and attempt-
ing Megara, and seizing Oreus, and razing Porthmus, and setting

DEMOSTHENES

up Philistides as tyrant in Oreus, Clitarchus in Eretria, and sub-
jugating the Hellespont, and besieging Byzantium, and destroying
some of the Greek cities, restoring exiles to others — was he by
all these proceedings committing injustice, breaking the truce,
violating the peace, or not ? Was it meet that any of the Greeks
should rise up to prevent these proceedings, or not? If not — if
Greece were to present the spectacle (as it is called) of a Mysian
prey, while Athenians had life and being, then I have exceeded
my duty in speaking on the subject — the commonwealth has ex-
ceeded her duty, which followed my counsels — I admit that
every measure has been a misdeed, a blunder of mine. But if
some one ought to have arisen to prevent these things, who but
the Athenian people should it have been ? Such, then, was the
policy which I espoused. I saw him reducing all men to sub-
jection, and I opposed him: I continued warning and exhorting
you not to make these sacrifices to Philip.

It was he that infringed the peace by taking our ships; it
was not the state, ^Eschines. Produce the decrees themselves,
and Philip's letter, and read them one after another. From an
examination of them it will be evident who is chargeable with
each proceeding. Read.

THE DECREE

(<In the archonship of Neocles, in the month Boedrotnion, an ex-
traordinary assembly having been convened by the generals, Eubulus,
son of Mnesitheus of Cytherus, moved: Whereas the generals have
reported in the assembly that Leodamas the admiral, and the twenty
vessels dispatched with him to the Hellespont for the safe conduct
of the corn, have been carried to Macedonia by Philip's general,
Amyntas, and are detained in custody, let the presidents and the
generals take care that the council be convened, and embassadors to
Philip be chosen, who shall go and treat with him for the release of
the admiral, vessels, and troops; and if Amyntas has acted in ignor-
ance, they shall say that the people make no complaint against him;
if the admiral is found wrongfully exceeding his instructions", that
the Athenians will make inquiry and punish him as his negligence
deserves: if it be neither of these things, but a willful trespass on
the part of him who gave or him who received the commission, let
them state this also, that the people, being apprised, may deliberate
what course to take."

This decree Eubulus carried, not I. The next, Aristophon;
then Hegesippus, then Aristophon again, then Philocrates, then

DEMOSTHENES I7<J-

Cephisophon, then the rest. I had no concern in the matter.
Read the decree.

THE DECREE

«In the archonship of Neocles, on the last day of Boedromion, at
the desire of the council, the presidents and generals introduced their
report of the proceedings of the assembly, to wit: that the people
had resolved to appoint embassadors to Philip for the recovery of the
ships, and to furnish them with instructions and with the decrees of
the assembly; and they appointed the following: Cephisophon, son of
Cleon of Anaphlystus; Democritus, son of Demophon of Anagyrus;
Polycritus, son of Apemantus of Cothocidae. In the presidency of
the Hippothoontian tribe, on the motion of Aristophon of Colyttus,
committeeman. w

Now then, as I produce these decrees, so do you, ^Eschines,
point out what decree of my passing makes me chargeable with
the war. You cannot find one; had you any, there is nothing
you would sooner have produced. Why, even Philip makes no
charge against me on account of the war, though he complains
of others. Read Philip's own letter.

THE LETTER OF PHILIP

« Philip, king of Macedon, to the Council and People of Athens,
greeting. Your embassadors, Cephisophon, Democritus, and Polycri-
tus, came to me and conferred about the release of the galleys which
Laomedon commanded. Upon the whole, I think you must be very
simple if you imagine I do not see that those galleys were commis-
sioned, under the pretense of conveying corn from the Hellespont to
Lemnos, to relieve the Selymbrians, whom I am besieging, and who
are not included in the friendly treaty subsisting between us. And
these instructions were given, without leave of the Athenian people,
by certain magistrates and others who are not now in office, but who
are anyways desirous for the people to exchange our present amity
for a renewal of war, and are far more anxious for such a consum-
mation than to relieve the Selymbrians. They suppose it will be a
source of income to themselves; however, I scarcely think it is for
your advantage or mine. Wherefore I release you the vessels carried
into my port; and for the future, if, instead of allowing your states-
men to adopt malignant measures, you will punish them, I too will
endeavor to maintain the peace. Farewell."

Here is no mention by him of Demosthenes, or any charge
against me. Why, then, while he complains of the others, makes

1704

DEMOSTHENES

he no mention of my acts ? Because he must have noticed his
own aggressions, had he written aught concerning me; for on
these I fixed myself — these I kept resisting. And first I pro-
posed the embassy to Peloponnesus, when into Peloponnesus he
began to steal; next that to Euboea, when on Euboea he was
laying his hands; then the expedition (no longer an embassy) to
Oreus, and that to Eretria, when he established rulers in those
cities. Afterward I dispatched all the armaments, by which
Chersonesus was preserved, and Byzantium, and all our allies;
whence to you there accrued the noblest results — praises, eulo-
gies, honors, crowns, thanks from those you succored; while the
people attacked — those that trusted you then obtained deliver-
ance, those that disregarded you have had often to remember
your warnings and to be convinced that you were not only their
friends, but wise men also and prophets: for all that you pre-
dicted has come to pass.

That Philistides would have given a great deal to keep Oreus
— Clitarchus a great deal to keep Eretria — Philip himself a great
deal to have these vantage-posts against you, and in other mat-
ters to avoid exposure, and any inquiry into his wrongful acts in
general — no man is ignorant, and least of all you. For the em-
bassadors who came here then from Clitarchus and Philistides
lodged with you, ^Eschines, and you were their host. The com-
monwealth regarded them as enemies, whose offers were neither
just nor advantageous, and expelled them; but they were your
friends. None of their designs then were accomplished; you
slanderer — who say of me that I am silent when I have got
something, and bawl when I have spent it! That is not your
custom. You bawl when you have something, and will never
stop, unless the jury stop you by disfranchisement to-day.

When you crowned me then for those services, and Ariston-
icus drew up the same words that Ktesiphon here has now drawn
up, and the crown was proclaimed in the theatre, — for this now
is the second proclamation in my favor, — ^Eschines, being pres-
ent, neither opposed it, nor indicted the mover. Take this decree
now and read it.

THE DECREE

w In the archonship of Chaerondas, son of Hegemon, on the twenty-
fifth of Gamelion, in the presidency of the Leontian tribe, Aristoni-
cus of Phrearrii moved : Whereas Demosthenes, son of Demosthenes of

DEMOSTHENES

Paeania, hath rendered many important services to the people of
Athens, and to divers of her allies heretofore, and hath also on the
present occasion aided them by his decrees, and liberated certain of
the cities in Euboea, and perseveres in his attachment to the people
of Athens, and doth by word and deed whatever good he can for the
Athenians themselves and the rest of the Greeks: It is resolved by
the Council and People of Athens, to honor Demosthenes, son of De-
mosthenes of Paeania, with public praise and a golden crown, and to.
proclaim the crown in the theatre at the Dionysian festival at the
new tragedies, and the proclamation of the crown shall be given in
charge to the presiding tribe and the prize-master. On the motion
of Aristonicus of Phrearrii.*

Is there one of you that knows of any disgrace falling on the
state by reason of this decree, or any scorn or ridicule — conse-
quences which this man now predicts, if I be crowned ? It is when
acts are recent and notorious that, if good, they obtain reward, if
the contrary, punishment; and it appears that I then obtained
reward, not blame or punishment. So, up to the period of those
transactions, I am acknowledged on all occasions to have pro-
moted the interests of the state — because my speeches and mo-
tions prevailed in your councils — because my measures were
executed, and procured crowns for the commonwealth and for me
and all of you — because you have offered sacrifices and thanks-
givings to the gods for their success.

When Philip therefore was driven out of Euboea, with arms by
you, with councils and decrees — though some persons there should
burst! — by me, he sought some new position of attack upon
Athens. Seeing that we use more foreign corn than any people,
and wishing to command the passage of the corn trade, he ad-
vanced to Thrace ; the Byzantines being his allies, he first required
them to join in the war against you, and when they refused, say-
ing (truly enough) that they had not made alliance on such
terms, he threw up intrenchments before the city, planted batter-
ies, and laid siege to it. What course hereupon it became you to
take, I will not ask again; it is manifest to all. But who was it
that succored the Byzantines and rescued them ? Who prevented
the alienation of the Hellespont at that crisis ? You, men of
Athens. When I say you, I mean the commonwealth. But who
advised, framed, executed the measures of state, devoted himself
wholly and unreservedly to the public business ? — I ! — What
benefits thence accrued to all, you need no further to be told;

DEMOSTHENES

you have learned by experience. For the war which then sprang
up, besides that it brought honor and renown, kept you in a
cheaper and more plentiful supply of all the necessaries of life
than does the present peace, which these worthies maintain to
their country's prejudice in the hope of something to come.
Perish such hope ! Never may they share the blessings for which
you men of honest wishes pray to the gods, nor communicate
their own principles to you!

Read them now the crowns of the Byzantines, and those of
the Perinthians, which they conferred upon the country as a re-
ward.

THE BYZANTINE DECREE

(< In the presbytership of Bosporichus, Datnagetus moved in the
assembly, having obtained permission of the Council: Whereas the
people of Athens have ever in former times been friendly to the By-
zantines and their allies, and to their kinsmen the Perinthians,
and have rendered them many signal services, and also, on the pres-
ent occasion, when Philip of Macedon attempted by invasion and
siege to exterminate the Byzantines and Perinthians, and burned and
ravaged their country, they succored us with a hundred and twenty
ships and provisions and weapons and soldiers, and rescued us from
grievous perils, and preserved our hereditary constitution, our laws,
and our sepulchres; it is resolved by the people of Byzantium and
Perinthus to grant unto the Athenians the right of intermarriage,
citizenship, purchase of land and houses, the first seat at the games,
first admission to the council and people after the sacrifices, and ex-
emption from all public services to such as wish to reside in the
city; and that three statues of sixteen cubits be erected in the har-
bor, representing the people of Athens crowned by the people of
Byzantium and Perinthus; and deputations sent to the general assem-
blies of Greece, — the Isthmian, Nemean, Olympian, and Pythian, — to
proclaim the crowns wherewith the people of Athens hath been hon-
ored by us, that all the Greeks may know the virtue of the Athenians
and the gratitude of the Byzantines and Perinthians. w

Now read the crowns given by the people of Chersonesus.

THE DECREE

(<The Chersonesites, inhabitants of Sestus, Eleus, Madytus, and Al-
opeconnesus, crown the Council and People of Athens with a golden
crown of the value of sixty talents, and build an altar to Gratitude

DEMOSTHENES

and the Athenian People, because that people hath helped the Cher-
sonesites to obtain the greatest of blessings, by rescuing them from
the power of Philip, and restoring their country, their laws, their lib-
erty, their sanctuaries ; and in all future time they will not fail to be
grateful, and do what service they can. Decreed in general council.*

Thus the saving of Chersonesus and Byzantium, the prevent-
ing Philip's conquest of the Hellespont, and the honors therefore
bestowed on this country, were the effects of my policy and ad-
ministration; and more than this — they proved to all mankind the
generosity of Athens and the baseness of Philip. He, the ally
and friend of the Byzantines, was before all eyes besieging them
— what could be more shameful or outrageous? You, who might
justly on many grounds have reproached them for wrongs done
you in former times, instead of bearing malice and abandon-
ing the oppressed, appeared as their deliverers, — conduct which
procured you glory, good-will, honor from all men. That you
have crowned many of your statesmen, every one knows; but
through what other person (I mean what minister or orator)
besides myself, the commonwealth has been crowned, no one
can say.

To prove now the malignity of those calumnies, which he
urged against the Euboeans and Byzantines, reminding you of
any unkindness which they had done you — prove it I shall, not
only by their falsehood, which I apprehend you know already,
but (were they ever so true) by showing the advantages of my
policy — I wish to recount one or two of the noble acts of your
own state, and to do it briefly; for individuals, as well as com-
munities, should ever strive to model their future conduct by the
noblest of their past.

Well, then, men of Athens, when the Lacedaemonians had the
empire of land and sea, and held the country round Attica by
governors and garrisons, Euboea, Tanagra, all Boeotia, Megara,
JEgina, Cleonae, the other islands; when our state possessed
neither ships nor walls, you marched out to Haliartus, and again
not many days after to Corinth; albeit the Athenians of that
time had many causes of resentment against both Corinthians
and Thebans for their acts in the Decelean war; but they showed
no resentment, none. And yet neither of these steps took they,
^Eschines, for benefactors, nor were they blind to the danger;
but they would not for such reasons abandon people who sought
their protection; for the sake of renown and glory they willingly

I7o8 DEMOSTHENES

exposed themselves to peril. Just and noble was their resolve!
For to all mankind the end of life is death, though one keep
oneself shut up in a closet; but it becomes brave men to
strive always for honor, with good hope before them, and to en-
dure courageously whatever the Deity ordains.

Thus did your ancestors, thus the elder among yourselves.
For, 'though the Lacedaemonians were neither friends nor bene-
factors, but had done many grievous injuries to our state, yet
when the Thebans, victorious at Leuctra, sought their destruc-
tion, you prevented it, not fearing the power and reputation then
possessed by the Thebans, nor reckoning up the merits of those
whom you were about to fight for. And so you demonstrated to
all the Greeks that, however any people may offend you, you re-
serve your anger against them for other occasions; but should
their existence or liberty be imperiled, you will not resent your
wrongs or bring them into account.

And not in these instances only hath such been your temper.
Again, when the Thebans were taking possession of Euboea, you
looked not quietly on, you remembered not the wrongs done you
by Themison and Theodorus in the affair of Oropus, but assisted
even them. It was the time when the volunteer captains first
offered themselves to the state, of whom I was one; but of this
presently. However, it was glorious that you saved the island,
but far more glorious that, when you had got their persons and
their cities in your power, you fairly restored them to the people
who had ill-used you, and made no reckoning of your wrongs in
an affair where you were trusted.

Hundreds of cases which I could mention I pass over — sea
fights, land marches, campaigns, both in ancient times and in
your own, all of which the commonwealth has undertaken for
the freedom and safety of the Greeks in general. Then, having
observed the commonwealth engaging in contests of such num-
ber and importance for the interests of others, what was I to
urge, what course to recommend her when the question in a
manner concerned herself? To revive grudges, I suppose, against
people who wanted help, and to seek pretenses for abandoning
everything. And who might not justly have killed me, had I
attempted even by words to tarnish any of the honors of Athens ?
For the thing itself, I am certain, you would never have done —
had you wished, what was to hinder you ? any lack of opportun-
ity ? — had you not these men to advise it?

DEMOSTHENES J?

I must return to the next in date of my political acts; and
here again consider what was most beneficial for the state. I
saw, men of Athens, that your navy was decaying, and that,
while the rich were getting off with small payments, citizens of
moderate or small fortunes were losing their substance, and the
state, by reason thereof, missing her opportunities of action. I
therefore proposed a law, by which I compelled the one class
(the rich) to perform their duty, and stopped the oppression of
the poor; and — what was most useful to the country — I caused
her preparations to be made in time. And being indicted for it,
I appeared on the charge before you, and was acquitted; and
the prosecutor did not get his portion of the votes. But what
sums, think ye, the chief men of the boards, or those in the sec-
ond and third degrees, offered me, first, not to propose that law,
second, when I had recorded it, to drop it on the abatement
oath ? Such sums, men of Athens, as I should be afraid to tell
you. And no wonder they did so; for under the former laws
they might divide the charge between sixteen, spending little
or nothing themselves, and grinding down the needy citizens;
whereas under my law every one had to pay a sum proportioned
to his means, and there was a captain for two ships, where be-
fore there was a partner with fifteen others for one ship — for
they were calling themselves not captains any longer, but part-
ners. They would have given anything then to get these regula-
tions annulled, and not be obliged to perform their duties. Read
me, first, the decree for which I appeared to the indictment, then
the service rolls, that of the former law, and that under mine.
Read.

THE DECREE

<(In the archonship of Polycles, on the sixteenth of Boedromion,
in the presidency of the Hippothoontian tribe, Demosthenes, son of
Demosthenes of Paeania, introduced a law for the naval service, in-
stead of the former one under which there were the associations of
joint captains; and it was passed by the council and people. And
Patrocles of Phlyus preferred an indictment against Demosthenes for
an illegal measure, and, not having obtained his share of the votes,
paid the penalty of five hundred drachms.*

Now produce that fine roll.

DEMOSTHENES

THE ROLL

<( Let sixteen captains be called out for every galley, as they are
associated in the companies, from the age of twenty-five to forty,
defraying the charge equally.*

Now for the roll under my law.

THE ROLL

"Let captains be chosen according to their property by valuation,
taking ten talents to a galley: if the property be valued at a higher
sum, let the charge be proportionate, as far as three ships and a
tender; and let it be in the same proportion for those whose property
is less than ten talents, joining them in a partnership to make up
ten talents.*

Think ye I but slightly helped the poor of Athens, or that
the rich would have spent but a trifling sum to escape the doing
what was right ? I glory, however, not only in having refused
this compromise, and having been acquitted on the indictment,
but because my law was beneficial, and I have proved it so by
trial. For during the whole war, while the armaments were
shipped off according to my regulations, no captain ever ap-
pealed to you against oppression, or took sanctuary at Munychia,
or was imprisoned by the clearing officers; no galley was lost to
the state by capture abroad, or left behind from unfitness to go
to sea. Under the former laws all these things happened —
because the burden was put upon the poor, and therefore diffi-
culties frequently arose. I transferred the charge from the poor
to the wealthy, and then every duty was done. For this itself,
too, I deserve praise, that I adopted all such measures as brought
glory and honor and power to the state: there is no envy, spite,
or malice in any measure of mine, nothing sordid or unworthy
of Athens. The same character is apparent in my home and in
my foreign policy. At home, I never preferred the favor of the
wealthy to the rights of the many: abroad, I valued not the pres-
ents or the friendship of Philip above the general interests of
Greece.

I conceive it remains for me to speak of the proclamation
and the accounts: for that I acted for the best — that I have

DEMOSTHENES

throughout been your friend and zealous in your service, is
proved abundantly, methinks, by what I have said already. The
most important part of my policy and administration I pass by,
considering that I have in regular course to reply to the charge
of illegality; and besides — though I am silent as to the rest of
my political acts — the knowledge you all have will serve me
equally well.

As to the arguments which he jumbled together about the
counter- written laws, I hardly suppose you comprehend them — I
myself could not understand the greater part. However I shall
argue a just case in a straightforward way. So far from saying
that I am not accountable, as the prosecutor just now falsely as-
serted, I acknowledge that I am all my life accountable for what
as your statesman I have undertaken or advised; but for what I
have voluntarily given to the people out of my own private for-
tune, I deny that I am any day accountable, — do you hear,
yEschines? — nor is any other man, let him even be one of the
nine archons. For what law is so full of injustice and inhuman-
ity as to enact that one who has given of his private means
and done an act of generosity and munificence, instead of having
thanks, shall be brought before malignants, appointed to be the
auditors of his liberality ? None. If he says there is, let him
produce it, and I will be content and hold my tongue. But
there is none, men of Athens. The prosecutor in his malice, be-
cause I gave some of my own money when I superintended the
theoric fund, says, "The council praised him before he had
rendered his account. w Not for any matters of which I had an
account to render, but for what I spent of my own, you malig-
nant!

w Oh, but you were a Conservator of Walls ! w says he. Yes ;
and for that reason was I justly praised, because I gave the
sums expended and did not charge them. A charge requires
auditing and examiners; a donation merits thanks and praise;
therefore the defendant made this motion in my favor.

That this is a settled principle in your hearts as well as in
the laws, I can show by many proofs easily. First, Nausicles has
often been crowned by you for what he expended out of his own
funds while he was general. Secondly, Diotimus was crowned
for his present of shields; and Charidemus too. Again, Neop-
tolemus here, superintendent of divers works, has been honored
for his donations. It would, indeed, be cruel if a man holding an

1712

DEMOSTHENES

office should either, by reason of his office, be precluded from
.giving his own money to the state, or have, instead of receiving
thanks, to render an account of what he gave. To prove the
truth of my statements, take and read me the original decrees
made in favor of these men.

A DECREE

^Archon, Demonicus of Phlyus. On the twenty-sixth of Boedromion,
with the sanction of the council and people, Callias of Phrearrii moved :
That the council and people resolve to crown Nausicles, general of
foot, for that, there being two thousand Athenian troops of the line
in Imbrus, for the defense of the Athenian residents in that island,
and Philo of the Finance Department being by reason of storms un-
able to sail and pay the troops, he advanced money of his own and
did not ask the people for it again; and that the crown be pro-
claimed at the Dionysian festival, at the new tragedies. w

ANOTHER DECREE

<( Callias of Phrearrii moved, the presidents declaring it to be with
the sanction of the council: Whereas Charidemus, general of foot,
having been sent to Salamis, he and Diotimus, general of horse, after
certain of the troops had in the skirmish by the river been disarmed
by the enemy, did at their own expense arm the young men with
eight hundred shields: It hath been resolved by the council and
people to crown Charidemus and Diotimus with a golden crown, and
to proclaim it at the great Panathenaic festival, during the gymnastic
contest, and at the Dionysian festival, at the exhibition of the new
tragedies: the proclamation to be given in charge to the judges, the
presidents, and the prize masters. "

Each of these men, ^Eschines, was accountable for the office
which he held, but not accountable for the matters in respect of
which he was crowned. No more then am I; for surely I have
the same rights, under the same circumstances, as other men.
Have I given money ? I am praised for that, not being account-
able for what I gave. Did I hold office ? Yes ; and I have ren-
dered an account of my official acts, not of my bounties. Oh,
but I was guilty of malpractices in office! And you, present
when the auditors brought me up, accused me not ?

To show you that he himself bears testimony to my having
been crowned for what I had no account to render of, take and
read the whole decree drawn up in my favor. By the portions

DEMOSTHENES ,-,,

of the bill which he never indicted it will appear that his prose-
cution is vexatious. Read.

THE DECREE

wln the archonship of Euthycles, on the twenty-second of Pyan-
epsion, in the presidency of the CEneian tribe, Ctesiphon, son of
Leosthenes of Anaphlystus, moved: Whereas Demosthenes, son of
Demosthenes of Paeania, having been superintendent of the repair
of the walls, and having expended on the works three additional
talents out of his own money, hath given that sum to the people;
and whereas, having been appointed treasurer of the theoric fund,
he hath given to the theoric officers of the tribes a hundred minas
toward the sacrifices, the council and people of Athens have re-
solved to honor Demosthenes, son of Demosthenes of Paeania, with
public praise for the goodness and generosity which he has shown
throughout on every occasion toward the people of Athens, and to
crown him with a golden crown, and to proclaim the crown in the
theatre, at the Dionysian festival, at the performance of the new
tragedies: the proclamation to be given in charge to the prize
master. ft

These were my donations; none of which have you indicted;
the rewards which the council says I deserve for them are what
you arraign. To receive the gifts then you confess to be legal;
the requital of them you indict for illegality. In the name of
heaven! what sort of person can a monster of wickedness and
malignity be, if not such a person as this?

Concerning the proclamation in the theatre, I pass over the
fact that thousands of thousands have been proclaimed, and I
myself have been crowned often before. But by the gods! are
you so perverse and stupid, ^Eschines, as not to be able to re-
flect that the party crowned has the same glory from the crown
wherever it be published, and that the proclamation is made in
the theatre for the benefit of those who confer the crown ? For
the hearers are all encouraged to render service to the state,
and praise the parties who show their gratitude more than the
party crowned. Therefore has our commonwealth enacted this
law. Take and read me the law itself.

THE LAW

" Whensoever any of the townships bestow crowns, proclamations
thereof shall be made by them in their several townships, unless
v — 1 08

1714

DEMOSTHENES

where any are crowned by the people of Athens or the council; and
it shall be lawful for them to be proclaimed in the theatre at the
Dionysian festival.*

Do you hear, ^schines, the law distinctly saying — "imless
where any are voted by the people or the council * ; such may be
proclaimed ? Why, then, wretched man, do you play the petti-
fogger ? Why manufacture arguments ? Why don't you take
hellebore for your malady ? Are you not ashamed to bring on a
cause for spite and not for any offense? to alter some laws and
to garble others, the whole of which should in justice be read to
persons sworn to decide according to the laws ? And you that
act thus describe the qualities which belong to a friend of the
people, as if you had ordered a statue according to contract,
and received it without having what the contract required; or
as if friends of the people were known by words, and not by
acts and measures! And you bawl out, regardless of decency,
a sort of cart-language, applicable to yourself and your race, not
to me.

Again, men of Athens, I conceive abuse to differ from accusa-
tion in this, that accusation has to do with offenses for which
the laws provide penalties, abuse with the scandal which enemies
speak against each other according to their humor. And I be-
lieve our ancestors built these courts, not that we should assem-
ble you here and bring forth the secrets of private life for
mutual reproach, but to give us the means of convicting persons
guilty of crimes against the state. ./Eschines knew this as well
as I, and yet he chose to rail rather than to accuse.

Even in this way he must take as much as he gives; but be-
fore I enter upon such matters, let me ask him one question —
Should one call you the state's enemy or mine, ^schines ? Mine,
of course. Yet, where you might, for any offense which I com-
mitted, have obtained satisfaction for the people according to the
laws, you neglected it — at the audit, on the indictments and
other trials; but where I in my own person am safe on every
account, by the laws, by time, by prescription, by many previous
judgments on every point, by my never having been convicted
of a public offense — and where the country must share, more or
less, in the repute of measures which were her own — here it is
you have encountered me. See if you are not the people's
enemy, while you pretend to be mine!

DEMOSTHENES ,.,-

Since, therefore, the righteous and true verdict is made clear
to all; but I must, it seems, — though not naturally fond of rail-
ing, yet on account of the calumnies uttered by my opponent, —
in reply to so many falsehoods, just mention some leading partic-
ulars concerning him, and show who he is, and from whom
descended, that so readily begins using hard words — and what
language he carps at, after uttering such as any decent man
would have shuddered to pronounce. Why, if my accuser had
been ^Eacus, or Rhadamanthus, or Minos, instead of a prater, a
hack of the market, a pestilent scribbler, I don't think he would
have spoken such things, or found such offensive terms, shout-
ing, as in a tragedy, WO Earth! O Sun! O Virtue!" and the
like; and again appealing to intelligence and education, by which
the honorable is distinguished from the base: — all this you un-
doubtedly heard from his lips. Accursed one! What have you
or yours to do with virtue ? How should you discern what is
honorable or otherwise ? How were you ever qualified ? What
right have you to talk about education ? Those who really pos-
sess it would never say as much of themselves, but rather blush
if another did: those who are destitute like you, but make pre-
tensions to it from stupidity, annoy the hearers by their talk,
without getting the reputation which they desire.

I am at no loss for materials concerning you and your family,
but am in doubt what to mention first — whether how your father
Tromes, being servant to Elpias, who kept a reading-school in
the temple of Theseus, wore a weight of fetters and a collar; or
how your mother, by her morning spousals in the cottage by
Hero Calamites, reared up you, the beautiful statue, the eminent
third-rate actor!

But all know without my telling these things; or how the
galley piper Phormio, the slave of Dion of Phrearrii, removed
her from that honorable employment. But, by Jupiter and the
gods! I fear, in saying what is proper about you, I may be
thought to have chosen topics unbecoming to myself. All this,
therefore, I shall pass by, and commence with the acts of his
own life; for, indeed, he came not of common parents, but of
such as are execrated by the people. Very lately, — lately do I
say ? — it is but yesterday that he has become both an Athenian
and an orator — adding two syllables, he converted his father
from Tromes to Atrometus, and dignified his mother by the
name of Glaucothea, who (as every one knows) was called Em-

DEMOSTHENES

pusa; having got that title (it is plain) from her doing and sub-
mitting to anything — how else could she have got it ? However,
you are so ungrateful and wicked by nature, that after being
raised through the people from servitude to freedom, from beg-
gary to affluence, instead of returning their kindness, you work
against them as a hireling politician.

Of the speeches, which it may possibly be contended he has
made for the good of the country, I will say nothing: of the acts
which he was clearly proved to have done for the enemy, I will
remind you.

What man present but knows of the outcast Antiphon, who
came into the city under promise to Philip that he would burn
your arsenal ? I found him concealed in Piraeus, and brought
him before the Assembly; when this mischief-maker, shouting
and clamoring that it was monstrous in a free state that I
should ill-treat unfortunate citizens, and enter houses without
warrant, procured his release. And had not the Council of
Areopagus, discovering the fact, and perceiving your ill-timed
error, made search after the man, seized and brought him before
you, a fellow like that would have been rescued, would have
slipped through the hands of justice, and been sent out of the
way by this declaimer. As it was, you put him to torture and
to death, as you ought this man also. The Council of Areopagus
were informed what ^Eschines had done, and therefore, though
you had elected him for your advocate on the question of the
Delian temple, in the same ignorance by which you have sacri-
ficed many of the public interests, as you referred the matter to
the council, and gave them full powers, they immediately re-
moved him for his treason, and appointed Hyperides to plead;
for which purpose they took their ballots from the altar, and
not a single ballot was given for this wretch. To prove the
truth of my statements, call me the witnesses.

WITNESSES

We, Callias of Sunium, Zenon of Phlytis, Cleon of Phalerum,
Demonicus of Marathon, testify for Demosthenes in the name of all,
that, the people having formerly elected ^schines for their advocate
before the Amphictyons on the question of the Delian temple, we in
council determined that Hyperides was more worthy to plead on be-
half of the state, and Hyperides was commissioned. w

DEMOSTHENES ,_,-

Thus, by removing this man when he was about to plead, and
appointing another, the council pronounced him a traitor and an
enemy.

Such is one of this boy's political acts, similar — is it not? —
to what he charges me with. Now let me remind you of another.
When Philip sent Python of Byzantium, together with an em-
bassy from all his own allies, with the intention of putting our
commonwealth to shame, and proving her in the wrong, then —
when Python swaggered and poured a flood of abuse upon you
— I neither yielded nor gave way; I rose and answered him, and
betrayed not the rights of the commonwealth. So plainly did I
convict Philip of injustice that his very allies rose up and ac-
knowledged it; while ^schines fought his battle, and bore wit-
ness, aye, false witness, against his own country.

Nor was this enough. Again, some time afterward, he was
found meeting Anaxinus the spy at Thraso's house. A man, I
say, who had a private meeting and conference with an emissary
of the foe must himself have been a spy by nature and an
enemy to his country. To prove these statements, call me the
witnesses.

WITNESSES

<( Teledemus, son of Cleon, Hyperides, son of Callaeschrus, Nicome-
chus, son of Diophantus, testify for Demosthenes, as they swore before
the generals, that ^Eschines, son of Atrometus of Cothocidae, did, to
their knowledge, meet by night in Thraso's house, and confer with
Anaxinus, who was adjudged to be a spy of Philip. These deposi-
tions were returned before Nicias, on the third of Hecatombaeon."

A vast deal besides that I could say about him I omit. For
thus (methinks) it is. I could produce many more such cases,
where -<5£schmes was discovered at that period assisting the
enemy and harassing me. But these things are not treasured
up by you for careful remembrance or proper resentment. You
have, through evil custom, given large license to any one that
chooses to supplant and calumniate your honest counselors, ex-
changing the interest of the state for the pleasure and gratifica-
tion of hearing abuse; and so it is easier and safer always to be
a hireling serving your enemies than a statesman attached to you.

That he should co-operate openly with Philip before the war
was shocking — O heaven and earth! could it be otherwise? —
against his country! Yet allow him if you please, allow him

1718

DEMOSTHENES

this. But when the ships had openly been made prize, Cher-
sonesus was ravaged, the man was marching against Attica, mat-
ters were no longer doubtful, war had begun — nothing that he
ever did for you can this malicious iambic-mouther show — not a
resolution has ^Eschines, great or small, concerning the interests
of the state. If he assert it, let him prove it now while my
water-glass is running. But there is none. He is reduced to an
alternative; either he had no fault to find with my measures
and therefore moved none against them, or he sought the good
of the enemy and therefore would not propose any better.

Did he abstain from speaking as well as moving when any
mischief was to be done to you ? Why, no one else could speak
a word. Other things, it appears, the country could endure,
and he could accomplish without detection; but one last act he
achieved, O Athenians, which crowned all he had done before;
on which he lavished that multitude of words, recounting the
decrees against the Amphissian Locrians in hopes of distorting
the truth. But the thing admits it not. No! never will you
wash yourself clean from your performances there — talk as long
as you will!

In your presence, men of Athens, I invoke all the gods and
goddesses to whom the Attic territory belongs, and Pythian
Apollo, the father god of our State; and I implore them all!
As I shall declare the truth to you, as I declared it in your
assembly at the time, the very moment I saw this wretch put-
ting his hand to the work, — for I perceived, instantly perceived
it, — so may they grant me favor and protection! If from malice
or personal rivalry I bring a false charge against my opponent,
may they cut me off from every blessing!

But wherefore this imprecation, this solemn assurance ? Be-
cause, though I have documents lying in the public archives,
from which I shall clearly prove my assertions, though I know
you remember the facts, I fear this man may be considered un-
equal to the mischiefs which he has wrought; as before hap-
pened, when he caused the destruction of the unhappy Phocians
by his false reports to you.

The Amphissian war, I say, — which brought Philip to Elatea,
which caused him to be chosen general of the Amphictyons,
which ruined everything in Greece, — was this man's contrivance.
He is the single author of all our heaviest calamities. I pro-
tested at the time, and cried out in the assembly : <( You are

DEMOSTHENES

bringing a war, ^schines, into Attica, an Amphictyonic war* —
but his packed party would not let me be heard; the rest won-
dered, and supposed that I was bringing an idle charge against
him out of personal enmity. However, the real character of
those transactions, the purpose for which they were got up, the
manner in which they were accomplished, hear ye now, men of
Athens, as ye were prevented then. You will see that the thing
was well concerted, and it will help you much to get a knowl-
edge of public affairs, and what craftiness there was in Philip
you will observe.

Philip could neither finish nor get rid of the war with Athens,
unless he made the Thebans and Thessalians her enemies.
Though your generals fought against him without fortune or
skill, yet from the war itself and the cruisers he suffered infinite
damage. He could neither export any of the produce of his
country, nor import what he needed. He was not then superior
to you at sea, nor able to reach Attica, unless the Thessalians
followed him and the Thebans gave him a passage; so that,
while he overcame in war the generals whom you sent out, —
such as they were — I say nothing about that, — he found himself
distressed by the difference of your local position and means.
Should he urge either Thessalians or Thebans to march in his
own quarrel against you, none, he thought, would attend to him:
but should he, under the pretense of taking up their common
cause, be elected general, he trusted partly by deceit and partly
by persuasion to gain his ends more easily. He sets to work
therefore — observe how cleverly — to get the Amphictyons into
a war and create a disturbance in the congress. For this he
thought they would immediately want him. Now, if any of the
presbyters commissioned by himself or any of his allies brought
it forward, he imagined that both Thebans and Thessalians would
suspect the thing and would all be on their guard; whereas, if the
agent were an Athenian and commissioned by you his opponents,
it would easily pass unnoticed. And thus it turned out.

How did he effect his purpose ? He hires the prosecutor. No
one (I believe) was aware of the thing or attending to it, and so
— just as these things are usually done at Athens — ^Eschines
was proposed for Pylaean deputy, three or four held up their
hands for him, and his election was declared. When clothed with
the dignity of the state he arrived among the Amphictyons, dis-
missing and disregarding all besides, he hastened to execute what

1720

DEMOSTHENES

he was hired for. He makes up a pretty speech and story, show-
ing how the Cirrhsean plain came to be consecrated; reciting this
to the presbyters, men unused to speeches and unsuspicious of
any consequences, he procures a vote from them to walk round
the district, which the Amphissians maintained they had a right
to cultivate, but which he charged to be parcel of the sacred
plain. The Locrians were not then instituting any suit against
us, or any such proceeding as JEschines now falsely alleges.
This will show you it was impossible (I fancy) for the Locrians
to carry on process against our commonwealth without a citation.
Who summoned us then ? In whose archonship ? Say who knows
— point him out. You cannot. Your pretense was flimsy and
false.

When the Amphictyons at the instance of this man walked
over the plain, the Locrians fell upon them and well-nigh speared
them all; some of the presbyters they carried off captive. Com-
plaints having followed, and war being stirred up against the
Amphyssians, at first Cottyphus led an army composed entirely
of Amphictyons; but as some never came, and those that came
did nothing, measures were taken against the ensuing congress
by an instructed gang, the old traitors of Thessaly and other
States, to get the command for Philip. And they had found a
fair pretext: for it was necessary, they said, either to subsidize
themselves and maintain a mercenary force and fine all recu-
sants, or to elect him. What need of many words ? He was
thereupon chosen general; and immediately afterward collecting
an army, and marching professedly against Cirrha, he bids a long
farewell to the Cirrhaeans and Locrians, and seizes Elatea. Had
not the Thebans, upon seeing this, immediately changed their
minds and sided with us, the whole thing would have fallen
like a torrent upon our country. As it was, they for the instant
stopped him; chiefly, O Athenians, by the kindness of some
divinity to Athens, but secondly, as far as it could depend on a
single man, through me. Give me those decrees, and the dates
of the several transactions, that you may know what mischief
this pestilent creature has stirred up with impunity. Read me
the decrees.

THE DECREE OF THE AMPHICTYONS

(<In the priesthood of Clinagoras, at the spring congress, it hath
been resolved by the deputies and councilors of the Amphictyons,

DEMOSTHENES

and by the assembly of the Amphictyons, seeing that the Amphis-
sians trespass upon the sacred plain and sow and depasture it with
cattle, that the deputies and councilors do enter thereupon and define
the boundaries with pillars, and enjoin the Amphissians not to tres-
pass for the future."

ANOTHER DECREE

wln the priesthood of Clinagoras, at the spring congress, it hath
been resolved by the deputies and councilors of the Amphictyons
and by the assembly of the Amphictyons, seeing that the people of
Amphissa have partitioned among themselves the sacred plain and
cultivate and feed cattle upon the same, and on being interrupted
have come in arms, and with force resisted the general council of
the Greeks, and have wounded some of them; that Cottyphus, the
Arcadian, who hath been elected general of the Amphictyons, be
sent embassador to Philip of Macedon, and do request him to come
to the aid of Apollo and the Amphictyons, that he may not suffer
the god to be insulted by the impious Amphissians; and do an-
nounce that the Greeks who are members of the Amphictyonic
Council appoint him general with absolute powers. »

Now read the dates of these transactions. They correspond
with the time when ^schines was deputy. Read.

DATES

(< Mnesithides archon, on the sixteenth of the month Anthesterion. *

t

Now give me the letter which, when the Thebans would not
hearken to Philip, he sends to his allies in Peloponnesus, that you
may plainly see even from this how the true motives of his en-
terprise, his designs against Greece and the Thebans and your-
selves were concealed by him, while he affected to be taking
measures for the common good under a decree of the Amphic-
tyons. The man who furnished him with these handles and
pretexts was ^Eschines. Read.

THE LETTER OF PHILIP

<( Philip, King of Macedon, to the magistrates and councilors of
the confederate Peloponnesians and to all the other allies greeting.
Whereas, the Locrians sumamed Ozolian, dwelling in Amphissa, com-
mit sacrilege against the temple of Apollo at Delphi, and coming
with arms despoil the sacred plain, I propose, with your assistance.

1722

DEMOSTHENES

to avenge the god, and to chastise people who violate any part of
our recognized religion. Wherefore meet me with arms in Phocis,
bringing provisions for forty days, in the ensuing month of Lous, as
we style it, Boedromion as the Athenians Panemus as the Corinth-
ians. Those who do not meet us with all their forces, we shall visit
with punishment. Farewell. >:)

You see, he avoids all private pleas and has recourse to an
Amphictyonic. Who was it, I say, that helped him to this con-
trivance— that lent him these excuses? Who is most to blame
for the misfortunes which have happened ? Surely ^Eschines.
Then go not about saying, <(O Athenians, that one man has in-
flicted these calamities on Greece ! M Heaven and earth ! It was
not a single man, but a number of miscreants in every state.
vEschines was one of them; and, were I obliged to speak the
truth without reserve, I should not hesitate to call him the com-
mon pest of all that have since been ruined, men, places, cities:
for whoever supplies the seed, to him the crop is owing. I mar-
vel, indeed, you turned not your faces away the moment you be-
held him. But there is a thick darkness, it seems, between you
and the truth.

The mention of this man's treasonable acts brings me to the
part which I have myself taken in opposition to him. It is fair
you should hear my account of it for many reasons, but chiefly,
men of Athens, because it would be a shame, when I have un-
dergone the toil of exertions on your behalf, that you should not
endure the bare recital of them.

When I saw that the Thebans, and I may add the Athenians,
were so led away by Philip's partisans and the corrupt men of
either state, as to disregard and take no precaution against a dan-
ger which menaced both and required the utmost precaution (I
mean the suffering Philip's power to increase), and were readily
disposed to enmity and strife with each other, I was constantly
watchful to prevent it, not only because in my own judgment I
deemed such vigilance expedient, but knowing that Aristophon,
and again Eubulus, had all along desired to bring about that
union, and, while they were frequently opposed upon other mat-
ters, were always agreed upon this. Men whom in their life-
time— you reptile! — you pestered with flattery, yet see not that
you are accusing them in their graves; for the Theban policy
that you reproach me with is a charge less affecting me than
them who approved that alliance before I did. But I must

DEMOSTHENES

return. I say, when ^Eschines had excited the war in Atn-
phissa, and his coadjutors had helped to establish enmity with
Thebes, Philip marched against us, — that was the object for
which these persons embroiled the states, — and had we not
roused up a little in time we could never have recovered our-
selves; so far had these men carried matters. In what position
you then stood to each other, you will learn from the recital of
these decrees and answers. Here, take and read them.

DECREE

<(In the archonship of Heropythus, on the twenty-fifth of the
month Elaphebolion, in the presidency of the Erechtheian tribe, by
the advice of the council and the generals: Whereas Philip hath
taken possession of certain neighboring cities, and is besieging others,
and finally is preparing to advance against Attica, setting our treaty
at nought, and designs to break his oaths and the peace in violation
of our common engagements: the council and people have resolved to
send unto him embassadors, who shall confer with him, and exhort
him above all to maintain his relations of amity with us and his con-
vention, or if not, to give time to the Commonwealth for delibera-
tion, and conclude an armistice until the month Thargelion. These
have been chosen from the council: Simus of Anagyrus, Euthydemus
of Phlyus, Bulagoras of Alopece.*

ANOTHER DECREE

"In the archonship of Heropythus, on the last day of the month
Munychion, by the advice of the Polemarch: Whereas Philip designs
to put the Thebans at variance with us, and hath prepared to ad-
vance with his whole army to the places nearest to Attica, violating
the engagements that subsist between us, the council and people
have resolved to send unto him a herald and embassadors, who shall
request and call upon him to conclude an armistice, so that the peo-
ple may take measures according to circumstances; for now they
do not purpose to march out in the event of anything reasonable.
Nearchus, son of Sosinomus and Polycrates, son of Epiphron, have
been chosen from the council; and for herald, Eunomus of Ana-
phlystus from the people. w

Now read the answers: —

TO THE ATHENIANS

« Philip, King of Macedon, to the Council and People of Athens,
greeting. Of the part which you have taken in reference to me

1724

DEMOSTHENES

from the beginning I am not ignorant, nor what exertions you are
making to gain over the Thessalians and Thebans, and also the
Boeotians. Since they are more prudent and will not submit their
choice to your dictation, but stand by their own interest, you shift
your ground, and, sending embassadors and a herald to me, you talk
of engagements and ask for an armistice, although I have given you
no offense. However, I have given audience to your embassadors,
and I agree to your request and am ready to conclude an armistice
if you will dismiss your evil counselors and degrade them as they
deserve. Farewell.*

TO THE THEBANS

"Philip, King of Macedon, to the Council and People of Thebes,
greeting. I have received your letter wherein you renew peace and
amity with me. I am informed, however, that the Athenians are
most earnestly soliciting you to accept their overtures. I blamed
you at first for being inclined to put faith in their promises and to
espouse their policy. But since I have discovered that you would
rather maintain peace with me than follow the counsels of others, I
praise you the more on divers accounts, but chiefly because you have
consulted in this business for your safety, and preserve your attach-
ment to me, which I trust will be of no small moment to you if you
persevere in that determination. Farewell.*

Philip having thus disposed the States toward each other by
his contrivances, and being elated by these decrees and answers,
came with his army and seized Elatea, confident that, happen
what might, you and the Thebans could never again unite.
What commotion there was in the city you all know; but let
me just mention the most striking circumstances.

It was evening. A person came with a message to the presi-
dents, that Elatea was taken. They rose from supper immediately,
drove off the people from their market-stalls, and set fire to the
wicker-frames; others sent for the generals and called the trump-
eter, and the city was full of commotion. The next morning at
daybreak the presidents summoned the council to their hall, and
you went to the assembly, and before they could introduce or
prepare the question, the whole people were up in their seats.
When the council had entered, and the presidents had reported
their intelligence and presented the courier, and he had made
his statement, the crier asked : w Who wishes to speak ? * and no
one came forward. The crier put the question repeatedly — still
no man rose, though all the generals were present and all the

DEMOSTHENES

orators, and our country with her common voice called for some
one to speak and save her — for when the crier raises his voice
according to law, it may justly be deemed the common voice of
our country. If those of greatest wealth, the three hundred — if
those who were both friendly to the state and wealthy, the men
who afterward gave such ample donations; for patriotism and
wealth produced the gift, — if those who desired the salvation of
Athens were the proper parties to come forward, all of you and
the other Athenians would have risen and mounted the platform;
for I am sure you all desired her salvation. But that occasion,
that day, as it seems, called not only for a patriot and a wealthy
man, but for one who had closely followed the proceedings from
their commencement, and rightly calculated for what object and
purpose Philip carried them on. A man who was ignorant of
these matters, or had not long and carefully studied them, let
him be ever so patriotic or wealthy, would neither see what
measures were needful, nor be competent to advise you.

Well, then, I was the man called for upon that day. I came
forward and addressed you. What I said I beg you for two rea-
sons attentively to hear; firstly, to be convinced that of all your
orators and statesmen I alone deserted not the patriot's post in
the hour of danger, but was found in the very moment of panic
speaking and moving what your necessities required; secondly,
because at the expense of a little time you will gain large expe-
rience for the future in all your political concerns.

I said those who were in such alarm under the idea that
Philip had got the Thebans with him did not, in my opinion,
understand the position of affairs; for I was sure, had that really
been so, we should have heard not of his being at Elatea, but
upon our frontiers; he was come, however, I knew for certain, to
make all right for himself in Thebes. <( Let me inform you,*
said I, "how the matter stands. All the Thebans whom it was
possible either to bribe or deceive he has at his command; those
who have resisted him from the first, and still oppose him, he
can in no way prevail upon; what, then, is his meaning and why
has he seized upon Elatea ? He means, by displaying a force in
the neighborhood, and bringing up his troops, to encourage and
embolden his friends, to intimidate his adversaries, that they may
either concede from fear what they now refuse, or be compelled.
Now," said I, "if we determine on the present occasion to re-
member any unkindness which the Thebans have done us, and to

1726

DEMOSTHENES

regard them in the character of enemies with distrust, in the first
place, we shall be doing just what Philip would desire; in the
next place, I fear his present adversaries embracing his friend-
ship and all Philippizing with one consent, they will both march
against Attica. But if you will hearken to me, and be pleased
to examine (not cavil at) what I say, I believe it will meet your
approval, and I shall dispel the danger impending over Athens.
What, then, do I advise ? First, away with your present fear ;
and rather fear all of ye for the Thebans; they are nearer harm
than we are; to them the peril is more immediate. Next, I say,
march to Eleusis, all the fighting men and the cavalry, and show
yourselves to the world in arms, that your partisans in Thebes
may have equal liberty to speak up for the good cause, knowing
that as the faction who sell their country to Philip have an army
to support them at Elatea, so the party that will contend for
freedom have your assistance at hand if they be assailed.

" Further, I recommend you to elect ten embassadors and em-
power them in conjunction with the generals to fix the time for
going there and for the out-march. When the embassadors have
arrived at Thebes, how do I advise that you should treat the
matter ? Pray attend particularly to this. Ask nothing of the
Thebans (it would be dishonorable at this time); but offer to
assist them if they require it, on the plea that they are in ex-
treme danger, and we see the future better than they do. If
they accept this offer and hearken 'to our counsels, so shall we
have accomplished what we desire, and our conduct will look
worthy of the state; should we miscarry, they will have them-
selves to blame for any error committed now, and we shall have
done nothing dishonorable or mean.*

This and more to the like effect I spoke and left the plat-
form. It was approved by all; not a word was said against me.
Nor did I make the speech without moving, nor make the mo-
tion without undertaking the embassy, nor undertake the embassy
without prevailing on the Thebans. From the beginning to the
end, I went through it all; I gave myself entirely to your service
to meet the dangers which encompassed Athens.

Produce me the decree which then passed. Now, ^Eschines,
how would you have me describe you, and how myself, upon
that day ? Shall I call myself Batalus, your nickname of re-
proach, and you not even a hero of the common sort, but one of
those upon the stage, Cresphontes or Creon, or the CEnomaus

DEMOSTHENES

whom you execrably murdered once at Colyttus ? Well, upon
that occasion, I, the Batalus of Paeania, was more serviceable to
the state than you, the (Enomaus of Cothocidae. You were of
no earthly use; I did everything which became a good citizen.
Read the decree.

THE DECREE OF DEMOSTHENES

wln the archonship of Nausicles, in the presidency of the Kan-
tian tribe, on the sixteenth of Scirophorion, Demosthenes, son of
Demosthenes of Pasania, moved: Whereas, Philip, King of Macedon,
hath in time past been violating the treaty of peace made between
him and the Athenian people, in contempt of his oaths and those
laws of justice which are recognized among all the Greeks, and hath
been annexing unto himself cities that no way belong to him, and
hath besieged and taken some which belong to the Athenians with-
out any provocation by the people of Athens, and at the present
time he is making great advances in cruelty and violence, foras-
much as in certain Greek cities he puts garrisons and overturns their
constitution, some he razes to the ground and sells the inhabitants
for slaves, in some he replaces a Greek population with barbarians,
giving them possession of the temples and sepulchres, acting in no
way foreign to his own country or character, making an insolent use
of his present fortune, and forgetting that from a petty and insignifi-
cant person he has come to be unexpectedly great; and the people
of Athens, so long as they saw him annexing barbarian or private
cities of their own, less seriously regarded the offense given to
themselves, but now that they see Greek cities outraged and some
destroyed, they think it would be monstrous and unworthy of their
ancestral glory to look on while the Greeks are enslaved:

(< Therefore it is resolved by the council and people of Athens, that
having prayed and sacrificed to the gods and heroes who protect the
Athenian city and territory, bearing in mind the virtue of their an-
cestors, who deemed it of greater moment to preserve the liberty of
Greece than their own country, they will put two hundred ships to
sea, and their admiral shall sail up into the straits of Thermopylae,
and their general and commander of horse shall march with the in-
fantry and cavalry to Eleusis, and embassadors shall be sent to the
other Greeks, and first of all to the Thebans, because Philip is near-
est their territory, and shall exhort them without dread of Philip to
maintain their own independence and that of Greece at large, and
assure them that the Athenian people, not remembering any variance
which has formerly arisen between the countries, will assist them
with troops and money and weapons and arms, feeling that for them

1728

DEMOSTHENES

(being Greeks) to contend among themselves for the leadership is
honorable, but to be commanded and deprived of the leadership by
a man of foreign extraction is derogatory to the renown of the
Greeks and the virtue of their ancestors : further, the people of
Athens do not regard the people of Thebes as aliens either in blood
or race; they remember also the benefits conferred by their ancestors
upon the ancestors of the Thebans; for they restored the children of
Hercules who were kept by the Peloponnesians out of their hered-
itary dominion, defeating in battle those who attempted to resist the
descendants of Hercules; and we gave shelter to OEdipus and his
comrades in exile ; and many other kind and generous acts have been
done by us to the Thebans : wherefore now also the people of Athens
will not desert the interests of the Thebans and the other Greeks:
And let a treaty be entered into with them for alliance and inter-
marriage, and oaths be mutually exchanged. Embassadors: Demos-
thenes, son of Demosthenes of Paeania, Hyperides, son of Oleander of
Spettus, Mnesithides, son of Antiphanes of Phrearrii, Democrates, son
of Sophilus of Phlyus, Callaeschrus, son of Diotimus of Cothocidae."

That was the commencement and first step in the negotiation
with Thebes: before then the countries had been led by these
men into discord and hatred and jealousy. That decree caused
the peril which then surrounded us to pass away like a cloud.
It was the duty of a good citizen, if he had any better plan, to
disclose it at the time, not to find fault now. A statesman and
a pettifogger, while in no other respect are they alike, in this
most widely differ. The one declares his opinion before the pro-
ceedings, and makes himself responsible to his followers, to for-
tune, to the times, to all men: the other is silent when he ought
to speak; at any untoward event he grumbles.

Now, as I said before, the time for a man who regarded the
commonwealth, and for honest counsel, was then: however, I will
go to this extent — if any one now can point out a better course,
or, indeed, if any other were practicable but the one which I
adopted, I confess that I was wrong. For if there be any meas-
ure now discovered, which (executed then) would have been to
our advantage, I say it ought not to have escaped me. But if
there is none, if there was none, if none can be suggested even
at this day, what was a statesman to do ? Was he not to choose the
best measures within his reach and view ? That did I, ^Eschines,
when the crier asked, <(Who wishes to speak?" — not, (<Who
wishes to complain about the past or to guarantee the future ? "

DEMOSTHENES

While you on those occasions sat mute in the assembly, I came
forward and spake. However, as you omitted then, tell us now.
Say, what scheme that I ought to have devised, what favorable
opportunity was lost to the state by my neglect ? — what alliance
was there, what better plan, to which I should have directed the
people ? But no ! The past is with all the world given up ; no
one even proposes to deliberate about it: the future it is, or the
present, which demands the action of a counselor. At the time, as
it appeared, there were dangers impending, and dangers at hand.
Mark the line of my policy at that crisis; don't rail at the event.
The end of all things is what the Deity pleases: his line of
policy it is that shows the judgment of the statesman. Do not
then impute it as a crime to me that Philip chanced to conquer
in battle: that issue depended not on me, but on God. Prove
that I adopted not all measures that according to human calcula-
tion were feasible — that I did not honestly and diligently and
with exertions beyond my strength carry them out — or that my
enterprises were not honorable and worthy of the state, and nec-
essary. Show me this, and accuse me as soon as you like. But
if the hurricane that visited us hath been too powerful, not for
us only, but for all Greece besides, what is the fair course ? As
if a merchant, after taking every precaution, and furnishing his
vessel with everything that he thought would insure her safety,
because afterward he met with a storm and his tackle was
strained or broken to pieces, should be charged with the ship-
wreck! <(Well, but I was not the pilot," he might say, just as I
was not the general. <( Fortune was not under my control : all
was under hers."

Consider and reflect upon this — If, with the Thebans on our
side, we were destined so to fare in the contest, what was to be
expected, if we had never had them for allies, but they had
joined Philip, as he used every effort of persuasion to make them
do ? And if, when the battle was fought three days' march from
Attica, such peril and alarm surrounded the city, what must we
have expected, if the same disaster had happened in some part
of our territory ? As it was (do you see ?) we could stand, meet,
breathe; mightily did one, two, three days, help to our preserva-
tion: in the other case — but it is wrong to mention things of
which we have been spared the trial by the favor of some deity,
and by our protecting ourselves with the very alliance which you
assail.

v — 109

1730

DEMOSTHENES

All this, at such length, have I addressed to you, men of the
jury, and to the outer circle of hearers; for, as to this contempti-
ble fellow, a short and plain argument would suffice.

If the future was revealed to you, yEschines, alone, when the
state was deliberating on these proceedings, you ought to have
forewarned us at the time. If you did not foresee it, you are
responsible for the same ignorance as the rest. Why, then, do
you accuse me in this behalf, rather than I you ? A better
citizen have I been than you in respect of the matters of which
I am speaking (others I discuss not at present), inasmuch as I
gave myself up to what seemed for the general good, not shrink-
ing from any personal danger, nor taking thought of any; while
you neither suggested better measures (or mine would not have
been adopted), nor lent any aid in the prosecuting of mine:
exactly what the basest person and worst enemy of the state
would do, are you found to have done after the event; and at
the same time Aristratus in Naxos and Aristolaus in Thasos, the
deadly foes of our state, are bringing to trial the friends of
Athens, and ^Eschines at Athens is accusing Demosthenes. Surely
the man who waited to found his reputation upon the misfor-
tunes of the Greeks deserves rather to perish than to accuse
another; nor is it possible that one who has profited by the
same conjunctures as the enemies of the commonwealth can
be a well-wisher of his country. You show yourself by your
life and conduct, by your political action, and even your political
inaction. Is anything going on that appears good for the peo-
ple ? ^schines is mute. Has anything untoward happened or
amiss? Forth comes ^schines; just as fractures and sprains are
put in motion, when the body is attacked by disease.

But since he insists so strongly on the event, I will even
assert something of a paradox: and I beg and pray of you not
to marvel at its boldness, but kindly to consider what I say. If,
then, the results had been foreknown to all, if all had foreseen
them, and you, ^schines, had foretold them and protested with
clamor and outcry, — you that never opened your mouth, — not
even then should the commonwealth have abandoned her design,
if she had any regard for glory, or ancestry, or futurity. As it
is, she appears to have failed in her enterprise, a thing to which
all mankind are liable, if the Deity so wills it: but then — claim-
ing precedency over others, and afterward abandoning her pre-
tensions— she would have incurred the charge of betraying all

DEMOSTHENES ,.-,

to Philip. Why, had we resigned without a struggle that which
our ancestors encountered every danger to win, who would not
have spit upon you ? Let me not say, the commonwealth or
myself! With what eyes, I pray, could we have beheld strangers
visiting the city, if the result had been what it is, and Philip
had been chosen leader and lord of all, but other people without
us had made the struggle to prevent it; especially when in former
times our country had never preferred an ignominious security
to the battle for honor ? For what Grecian or what barbarian is
ignorant that by the Thebans, or by the Lacedaemonians who
were in might before them, or by the Persian king, permission
would thankfully and gladly have been given to our common-
wealth, to take what she pleased and hold her own, provided
she would accept foreign law and let another power command in
Greece ?

But, as it seems, to the Athenians of that day such conduct
would not have been national, or natural, or endurable; none
could at any period of time persuade the commonwealth to at-
tach herself in secure subjection to the powerful and unjust:
through every age has she persevered in a perilous struggle for
precedency and honor and glory. And this you esteem so noble
and congenial to your principles that among your ancestors you
honor most those who acted in such a spirit; and with reason.
For who would not admire the virtue of those men who reso-
lutely embarked in their galleys and quitted country and home
rather than receive foreign law, choosing Themistocles who gave
such counsel for their general, and stoning Cyrsilus to death who
advised submission to the terms imposed — not him only, but
your wives also stoning his wife ? Yes, the Athenians of that
day looked not for an orator or a general who might help them
to a pleasant servitude: they scorned to live, if it could not be
with freedom. For each of them considered that he was not
born to his father or mother only, but also to his country. What
is the difference ? He that thinks himself born for his parents
only, waits for his appointed or natural end: he that thinks him-
self born for his country also, will sooner perish than behold her
in slavery, and will regard the insults and indignities, which must
be borne in a commonwealth enslaved, as more terrible than
death.

Had I attempted to say that I instructed you in sentiments
worthy of your ancestors, there is not a man who would not

1732

DEMOSTHENES

justly rebuke me. What I declare is that such principles are
your own. I show that before my time such was the spirit of
the commonwealth; though certainly in the execution of the par-
ticular measures I claim a share also for myself. The prosecutor,
arraigning the whole proceedings, and embittering you against
me as the cause of our alarms and dangers, in his eagerness to
deprive me of honor for the moment, robs you of the eulogies
that should endure forever. For should you, under a disbelief
in the wisdom of my policy, convict the defendant, you will ap-
pear to have done wrong, not to have suffered what befell you
by the cruelty of fortune. But never, never can you have done
wrong, O Athenians, in undertaking the battle for the freedom
and safety of all! I swear it by your forefathers — those that
met the peril at Marathon, those that took the field at Plataea,
those in the sea fight at Salamis, and those at Artemisium, and
many other brave men who repose in the public monuments, all
of whom alike, as being worthy of the same honor, the country
buried, ^Eschines, not only the successful or victorious ! Justly !
For the duty of brave men has been done by all: their fortune
has been such as the Deity assigned to each.

Accursed scribbler! you, to deprive me of the approbation
and affection of my countrymen, speak of trophies and battles
and ancient deeds, with none of which had this present trial the
least concern; but I! — Oh, you third-rate actor! — I, that rose
to counsel the state how to maintain her pre-eminence! in what
spirit was I to mount the hustings ? In the spirit of one having
unworthy counsel to offer ? — I should have deserved to perish !
You yourselves, men of Athens, may not try private and public
causes on the same principles: the compacts of every -day life
you are to judge of by particular laws and circumstances; the
measures of statesmen, by reference to the dignity of your an-
cestors. And if you think it your duty to act worthily of them,
you should every one of you consider, when you come into court
to decide public questions, that, together with your staff and
ticket, the spirit of the commonwealth is delivered to you.

But in touching upon the deeds of your ancestors, there were
some decrees and transactions which I omitted. I will return
from my digression.

On our arrival at Thebes, we found embassadors there from
Philip, from the Thessalians and from his other allies; our friends
in trepidation, his friends confident. To prove that I am not

DEMOSTHENES

asserting this now to serve my own purposes, read me the letter
which we embassadors dispatched on the instant. So outrageous
is my opponent's malignity, that, if any advantage was procured,
he attributes it to the occasion, not to me; while all miscarriages
he attributes to me and my fortune. And according to him, as
it seems, I, the orator and adviser, have no merit in results of
argument and counsel, but am the sole author of misfortunes in
arms and strategy. Could there be a more brutal calumniator or
a more execrable? Read the letter. [The letter is read.]

On the convening of the assembly, our opponents were intro-
duced first, because they held the character of allies. And they
came forward and spoke in high praise of Philip and disparage-
ment of you, bringing up all the hostilities that you ever com-
mitted against the Thebans. In fine, they urged them to show
their gratitude for the services done by Philip, and to avenge
themselves for the injuries which you had done them, either — it
mattered not which — by giving them a passage against you, or by
joining in the invasion of Attica; and they proved, as they fan-
cied, that by adopting their advice the cattle and slaves and other
effects of Attica would come into Boeotia, whereas by acting as
they said we should advise, Breotia would suffer pillage through
the war. And much they said besides, tending all to the same
point. The reply that we made I would give my life to recapit-
ulate, but I fear, as the occasion is past, you will look upon it
as if a sort of deluge had overwhelmed the whole proceedings,
and regard any talk about them as a useless troubling of you.
Hear, then, what we persuaded them and what answer they re-
turned. Take and read this : — [The answer of the Thebans is
read.]

After this they invited and sent for you. You marched to
their succor, and — to omit what happened between — their recep-
tion of you was so friendly, that, while their infantry and cavalry
were outside the walls, they admitted your army into their houses
and citadel, among their wives and children and all that was
most precious. Why, upon that day three of the noblest testi-
monies were before all mankind borne in your favor by the
Thebans, one to your courage, one to your justice, one to your
good behavior. For when they preferred fighting on your side
to fighting against you, they held you to be braver and juster in
your demands than Philip; and when they put under your charge
what they and all men are most watchful to protect, their wives

1734

DEMOSTHENES

and children, they showed that they had confidence in your good
behavior. In all which, men of Athens, it appeared they had
rightly estimated your character. For after your forces entered
the city, not so much as a groundless complaint was preferred
against you by any one, so discreetly did you behave yourselves;
and twice arrayed on their side in the earlier battles, that by the
river and the winter battle, you proved yourselves not irreproach-
able only, but admirable in your discipline, your equipments, and
your zeal, which called forth eulogies from other men to you, sac-
rifice and thanksgiving from you to the gods. And I would
gladly ask ^Eschines — while these things were going on, and the
city was full of enthusiasm and joy and praise, whether he joined
with the multitude in sacrifice and festivity, or sat at home sor-
rowing and moaning and repining at the public success. For if
he were present and appeared with the rest, is not his conduct
monstrous, or rather impious, when measures, which he himself
called the gods to witness were excellent, he now requires you
to condemn — you that have sworn by the gods ? If he were not
present, does he not deserve a thousand deaths for grieving to
behold what others rejoiced at ? Read me now the decrees.
[The decrees for sacrifice are read.]

We thus were engaged in sacrifice; the Thebans were in the
assurance that they had been saved through us, and it had come
about that a people, who seemed likely to want assistance through
the practices of these men, were themselves assisting others in
consequence of my advice which you followed. What language
Philip then uttered, and in what trouble he was on this account,
you shall learn from his letters which he sent to Peloponnesus.
Take and read them, that the jury may know what my perse-
verance and journey and toils and the many decrees which this
man just now pulled to pieces accomplished.

Athenians, you have had many great and renowned orators
before me; the famous Callistratus, Aristophon, Cephalus, Thra-
sybulus, hundreds of others; yet none of them ever thoroughly
devoted himself to any measure of state; for instance, the mover
of a resolution would not be embassador; the embassador would
not move a resolution; each one left for himself some relief, and
also, should anything happen, an excuse. How, then, it may be
said, did you so far surpass others in might and boldness as to
do everything yourself ? I don't say that ; but such was my con-
viction of the danger impending over us, that I considered it left

DEMOSTHENES ,.„

no room or thought for individual security; a man should have
been only too happy to perform his duty without neglect. As to
myself, I was persuaded, perhaps foolishly, yet I was persuaded,
that none would move better resolutions than myself, none would
execute them better, none as embassador would show more zeal
and honesty. Therefore I undertook every duty myself. Read
the letters of Philip. [The letters are read.]

To this did my policy, ^Eschines, reduce Philip. This Ian-
guage he uttered through me, he that before had lifted his voice
so boldly against Athens! For which I was justly crowned by
the people; and you were present and opposed it not, and
Diondas who preferred an indictment obtained not his share of
the votes. Here, read me the decrees which were then absolved,
and which this man never indicted. [The decrees are read.]

These decrees, men of Athens, contain the very words and
syllables which Aristonicus drew up formerly, and Ctesiphon the
defendant has now. And ^Eschines neither arraigned these him-
self, nor aided the party who preferred an indictment. Yet, if
his present charge against me be true, he might then have
arraigned Demomeles the mover and Hyperides with more show
of reason than he can the defendant. Why ? Because Ktesiphon
may refer to them, and to the decisions of the courts, and to the
fact of ^schines not having accused them, although they moved
the same decrees which he has now, and to the laws which bar
any further proceedings in such a case, and to many points be-
sides:— whereas then the question would have been tried on its
own merits, before any such advantages had been obtained. But
then, I imagine, it would have been impossible to do what
^Eschines now does — to pick out of a multitude of old dates
and decrees what no man knew before, and what no man would
have expected to hear to-day, for the purpose of slander — to
transpose dates and assign measures to the wrong causes instead
of the right, in order to make a plausible case. That was im-
possible then. Every statement must have been according to
the truth, soon after the facts, while you still remembered the
particulars and had them almost at your fingers' ends. Therefore
it was that he shunned all investigation at the time, and has
come at this late period; thinking, as it appears to me, that you
would make it a contest of orators, instead of an inquiry into
political conduct; that words would be criticized, and not inter-
ests of state.

1736

DEMOSTHENES

Then he plays the sophist, and says you ought to disregard
the opinion of us which you came from home with — that, as
when you audit a man's account under the impression that he
has a surplus, if it cast up right and nothing remain, you allow
it, so should you now accept the fair conclusion of the argument.
Only see how rotten in its nature (and justly so) is every wicked
contrivance! For by this very cunning simile he has now ac-
knowledged it to be your conviction that I am my country's
advocate and he is Philip's. Had not this been your opinion of
each, he would not have tried to persuade you differently. That
he has, however, no reasonable ground for requiring you to
change your belief, I can easily show, not by casting accounts, —
for that mode of reckoning applies not to measures, — but by
calling the circumstances briefly to mind, taking you that hear
me both for auditors and witnesses.

Through my policy which he arraigns, instead of the Thebans
invading this country with Philip, as all expected, they joined
our ranks and prevented him; instead of the war being in At-
tica, it took place seven hundred furlongs from the city on the
confines of Boeotia; instead of corsairs issuing from Euboea to
plunder us, Attica was in peace on the coast-side during the
whole war; instead of Philip being master of the Hellespont by
taking Byzantium, the Byzantines were our auxiliaries against
him. Does this computation of services, think you, resemble the
casting of accounts ? Or should we strike these out on a bal-
ance, and not look that they be kept in everlasting remem-
brance ? I will not set down that of the cruelty, remarkable in
cases where Philip got people all at once into his power, others
have had the trial; while of the generosity, which, casting about
for his future purposes, he assumed toward Athens, you have
happily enjoyed the fruits. I pass that by.

Yet this I do not hesitate to say: that any one desirous of
truly testing an orator, not of calumniating him, would never
have made the charges that you advanced just now, inventing
similes, mimicking words and gestures; (doubtless it hath deter-
mined the fortune of Greece, whether I spoke this word or that,
whether I moved my hand one way or the other!) no! he would
have examined the facts of the case, what means and resources
our country possessed, when I entered on the administration,
what, when I applied myself to it, I collected for her, and what
was the condition of our adversaries. Then, if I had lessened

DEMOSTHENES

her resources, he would have shown me to be guilty; if I had
greatly increased them, he would not have calumniated me.
However, as you have declined this course, I will adopt it. See
if I state the case fairly.

For resources, our country possessed the islanders, — not all,
but the weakest, for neither Chios, nor Rhodes, nor Corcyra was
with us; subsidies she had amounting to five-and-forty talents,
and they were anticipated; infantry or cavalry, none besides the
native. But what was most alarming and wrought most in favor
of the enemy, these men had got all our neighbors to be hos-
tile rather than friendly to us — Megarians, Thebans, Euboeans.
Such were the circumstances of our state; no man can say any-
thing to the contrary; look now at those of Philip, whom we
had to contend with. In the first place, he ruled his followers
with unlimited sway, the most important thing for military oper-
ations; in the next place, they had arms always in their hands;
besides, he had plenty of money and did what he pleased, not
giving notice by decrees, not deliberating openly, not brought to
trial by calumniators, not defending indictments for illegal meas-
ures, not responsible to any one, but himself absolute master,
leader, and lord of all. I, who was matched against him, — for it
is right to examine this, — what had I under my control ? Noth-
ing. Public speech, for instance, the only thing open to me —
even to this you invited his hirelings as well as myself; and
whenever they prevailed over me (as often happened for some
cause or other), your resolutions were passed for the enemy's
good. Still, under these disadvantages, I got you for allies Eu-
boeans, Achaeans, Corinthians, Thebans, Megarians, Leucadians,
Corcyraeans, from whom were collected fifteen thousand merce-
naries and two thousand horse, besides the national troops. Of
money, too, I procured as large a contribution as possible.

If you talk about just conditions with the Thebans, ^Eschines,
or with the Byzantines or Euboeans, or discuss now the question
of equal terms, first, I say, you are ignorant that of those gal-
leys formerly which defended Greece, being three hundred in
number, our commonwealth furnished two hundred, and never
( as it seemed ) thought herself injured by having done so, never
prosecuted those who advised it or expressed any dissatisfaction,
— shame on her if she had! — but was grateful to the gods, that
when a common danger beset the Greeks, she alone furnished
double what the rest did for the preservation of all. Besides, it

1738

DEMOSTHENES

is but a poor favor you do your countrymen by calumniating me.
For what is the use of telling us now what we should have
done ? — Why, being in the city and present, did you not make
your proposals then; if, indeed, they were practicable at a crisis
when we had to accept not what we liked but what the circum-
stances allowed ? Remember, there was one ready to bid against
us, to welcome eagerly those that we rejected, and give money
into the bargain.

But if I am accused for what I have actually done, how would
it have been, if, through my hard bargaining, the states had
gone off and attached themselves to Philip, and he had become
master at the same time of Euboea, Thebes, and Byzantium ?
What, think ye, these impious men would have said or done ?
Said doubtless, that the states were abandoned — that they wished
to join us and were driven away — that he had got command of
the Hellespont by the Byzantines, and become master of the
corn trade of Greece — that a heavy neighbor war had by means
of the Thebans been brought into Attica — that the sea had be-
come unnavigable by the excursion of pirates from Euboea! All
this would they have said sure enough, and a great deal besides.
A wicked, wicked thing, O Athenians, is a calumniator always,
every way spiteful and fault-finding. But this creature is a rep-
tile by nature, that from the beginning never did anything
honest or liberal; a very ape of a tragedian, village (Enomaus,
counterfeit orator! What advantage has your eloquence been to
your country? Now do you speak to us about the past? As if
a physician should visit his patients, and not order or prescribe
anything to cure the disease, but on the death of any one, when
the last ceremonies were performing, should follow him to the
grave and expound, how, if the poor fellow had done this and
that, he never would have died! Idiot! do you speak now?

Even the defeat — if you exult in that which should make
you groan, you accursed one! — by nothing that I have done will
it appear to have befallen us. Consider it thus, O Athenians.
From no embassy on which I was commissioned by you did I
ever come away defeated by the embassadors of Philip — neither
from Thessaly, nor from Ambracia, nor from the kings of Thrace,
nor from Byzantium, nor from any other place, nor on the last
recent occasion from Thebes; but where his embassadors were
vanquished in argument, he came with arms and carried the day.
And for this you call me to account, and are not ashamed to

DEMOSTHENES

jeer the same person for cowardice, whom you require single-
handed to overcome the might of Philip — and that too by words!
For what else had I at my command ? Certainly not the spirit
of each individual, nor the fortune of the army, nor the conduct
of the war, for which you would make me accountable; such a
blunderer are you!

Yet understand me. Of what a statesman may be responsible
for, I allow the utmost scrutiny; I deprecate it not. What are
his functions ? To observe things in the beginning, to foresee
and foretell them to others — this I have done. Again, where-
ever he finds delays, backwardness, ignorance, jealousies, vices
inherent and unavoidable in all communities, to contract them
into the narrowest compass, and, on the other hand, to promote
unanimity and friendship and zeal in the discharge of duty. All
this, too, I have performed; and no one can discover the least
neglect on my part. Ask any man by what means Philip achieved
most of his successes, and you will be told by his army and by
his bribing and corrupting men in power. Well; your forces
were not under my command or control; so that I cannot be
questioned for anything done in that department. But by refus-
ing the price of corruption I have overcome Philip; for as the
offerer of a bribe, if it be accepted, has vanquished the taker, so
the person who refuses it and is not corrupted has vanquished
the person offering. Therefore is the commonwealth undefeated
as far as I am concerned.

These, and such as these (besides many others), are the
grounds furnished by myself to justify the defendant's motion
in my behalf. Those which you, my fellow-citizens, furnished, I
will proceed to mention. Immediately after the battle, the peo-
ple, knowing and having witnessed everything which I did, in
the very midst of their alarm and terror, when it would not have
been surprising if the great body of them had even treated me
harshly, passed my resolutions for the safety of the country; all
their measures of defense, the disposition of the garrisons, the
trenches, the levies for our fortifications, were carried on under
my decrees; and further, upon the election of a commissioner of
grain, they chose me in preference to all. Afterward, when those
who were bent to do me a mischief conspired and brought in-
dictments, audits, impeachments, and the rest of it against me,
not at first in their own persons, but in such names as they im-
agined would most effectually screen themselves (for you surely

1740

DEMOSTHENES

know and remember that every day of that first period I was
arraigned, and neither the desperation of Sosicles, nor the malig-
nity of Philocrates, nor the madness of Diondas and Melantus,
nor anything else was left untried by them against me) ; on all
those occasions, chiefly through the gods, secondly through you
and the other Athenians, I was preserved. And with justice!
Yes, that is the truth, and to the honor of the juries who so con-
scientiously decided. Well, then; on the impeachments, when you
acquitted me and gave not the prosecutors their share of the
votes, you pronounced that my policy was the best; by my ac-
quittal on the indictments, my counsels and motion were shown
to be legal; by your passing of my accounts, you acknowledged
my whole conduct to have been honest and incorruptible. Under
these circumstances, what name could Ktesiphon with decency or
justice give to my acts ? [What could he give if not] that which
he saw the people give, which he saw the jurors give, which he
saw truth establish to the world ?

Aye, says he, that was a fine thing of Cephalus, never to have
been indicted. Yes, and a lucky one, too. But why should a
man, who has often been charged, but never convicted of crime,
be a whit the more liable to reproach ? However, men of Athens,
against my opponent I have a right to use the boast of Ceph-
alus, for he never preferred or prosecuted any indictment against
me; therefore I am a citizen as good as Cephalus, by his ad-
mission.

From many things one may see his unfeelingness and malig-
nity, but especially from his discourse about fortune. For my
part, I regard any one who reproaches his fellow-man with for-
tune as devoid of sense. He that is best satisfied with his con-
dition, he that deems his fortune excellent, cannot be sure that
it will remain so until the evening; how, then, can it be right to
bring it forward, or upbraid another man with it ? As ^Eschines,
however, has on this subject (besides many others) expressed
himself with insolence, look, men of Athens, and observe how
much more truth and humanity there shall be in my discourse
upon fortune than in his.

I hold the fortune of our commonwealth to be good, and so I
find the oracles of Dodonaean Jupiter and Pythian Apollo declar-
ing to us. The fortune of all mankind, which now prevails, I
consider cruel and dreadful: for what Greek, what barbarian, has
not in these times experienced a multitude of evils ? That

DEMOSTHENES I74,

Athens chose the noblest policy, that she fares better than those
very Greeks who thought, if they abandoned us, they should
abide in prosperity, I reckon as part of her good fortune: if she
suffered reverses, if all happened not to us as we desired, I con-
ceive she has had that share of the general fortune which fell to
our lot. As to my fortune (personally speaking) or that of any
individual among us, it should, as I conceive, be judged of in
connection with personal matters. Such is my opinion upon the
subject of fortune, a right and just one, as it appears to me, and
I think you will agree with it. ^schines says that my individ-
ual fortune is paramount to that of the commonwealth, the small
and mean to the good and great. How can this possibly be ?

However, if you are determined, ^Eschines, to scrutinize my
fortune, compare it with your own, and, if you find my fortune
better than yours, cease to revile it. Look, then, from the very
beginning. And I pray and entreat that I may not be con-
demned for bad taste. I do not think any person wise who insults
poverty, or who prides himself on having been bred in affluence;
but by the slander and malice of this cruel man I am forced
into such a discussion, which I will conduct with all the moder-
ation which circumstances allow.

I had the advantage, ^Eschines, in my boyhood, of going to
proper schools and having such allowance as a boy should have
who is to do nothing mean from indigence. Arrived at man's
estate I lived suitably to my breeding; was choir master, ship
commander, rate payer; backward in no acts of liberality, public
or private, but making myself useful to the commonwealth and
to my friends. When I entered upon state affairs, I chose such
a line of politics that both by my country and many people
of Greece I have been crowned many times, and not even you,
my enemies, venture to say that the line I chose was not honor-
able. Such, then, has been the fortune of my life: I could en-
large upon it, but I forbear, lest what I pride myself in should
give offense.

But you, the man of dignity, who spit upon others, look what
sort of fortune is yours compared with mine. As a boy you
were reared in abject poverty, waiting with your father on the
school, grinding the ink, sponging the benches, sweeping the
room, doing the duty of a menial rather than a freeman's son.
After you were grown up you attended your mother's initiations,
reading her books and helping in all the ceremonies; at night

I742 DEMOSTHENES

wrapping- the novitiates in fawn skin, swilling, purifying, and
scouring them with clay and bran, raising them after the lustra-
tion, and bidding them say, (< Bad I have scaped, and better I
have found w ; priding yourself that no one ever howled so lustily
— and I believe him ! for do not suppose that he who speaks so
loud is not a splendid howler! In the daytime you led your
noble orgiasts, crowned with fennel and poplar, through the high-
ways, squeezing the big-cheeked serpents and lifting them over
your head, and shouting Evoe Saboe, and capering to the words
Hyes Attes, Attes Hyes, saluted by the beldames as leader, con-
ductor, chest bearer, fan bearer, and the like, getting as your
reward tarts and biscuits and rolls; for which any man might
well bless himself and his fortune.

When you were enrolled among your fellow-townsmen, — by
what means I stop not to inquire, — when you were enrolled,
however, you immediately selected the most honorable of employ-
ments, that of clerk and assistant to our petty magistrates. From
this you were removed after a while, having done yourself all
that you charge others with; and then, sure enough, you dis-
graced not your antecedents by your subsequent life, but hiring
yourself to those ranting players, as they were called, Simylus
and Socrates, you acted third parts, collecting figs and grapes
and olives like a fruiterer from other men's farms, and getting
more from them than from the playing, in which the lives of
your whole company were at stake, for there was an implacable
and incessant war between them and the audience, from whom
you received so many wounds, that no wonder you taunt as cow-
ards people inexperienced in such encounters.

But passing over what may be imputed to poverty, I will
come to the direct charges against your character. You espoused
such a line of politics (when at last you thought of taking to
them), that, if your country prospered, you lived the life of a
hare, fearing and trembling and ever expecting to be scourged
for the crimes of which your conscience accused you, though all
have seen how bold you were during the misfortunes of the rest.
A man who took courage at the death of a thousand citizens —
what does he deserve at the hands of the living ? A great deal
more that I could say about him I shall omit; for it is not all I
can tell of his turpitude and infamy which I ought to let slip
from my tongue, but only what is not disgraceful to myself to
mention.

DEMOSTHENES

Contrast now the circumstances of your life and mine, gently
and with temper, yEschines, and then ask these people whose
fortune they would each of them prefer. You taught reading, I
went to school; you performed initiations, I received them; you
danced in the chorus, I furnished it; you were assembly clerk, I
was a speaker; you acted third parts, I heard you; you broke
down, and I hissed; you have worked as a statesman for the
enemy, I for my country. I pass by the rest; but this very day
I am on my probation for a crown, and am acknowledged to be
innocent of all offense, while you are already judged to be a
pettifogger, and the question is, whether you shall continue that
trade or at once be silenced by not getting a fifth part of the
votes. A happy fortune, do you see, you have enjoyed, that you
should denounce mine as miserable!

Come, now, let me read the evidence to the jury of public
services which I have performed. And by way of comparison
do you recite me the verses which you murdered: —

"From Hades and the dusky realms I come."
And

"111 news, believe me, I am loth to bear."

Ill betide thee, say I, and may the gods, or at least the Athe-
nians, confound thee for a vile citizen and a vile third-rate actor!

Read the evidence. [The evidence is read.]

Such has been my character in political matters. In private,
if you do not all know that I have been liberal and humane and
charitable to the distressed, I am silent; I will say not a word; I
will offer no evidence on the subject, either of persons whom I
ransomed from the enemy, or of persons whose daughters I helped
to portion, or anything of the kind. For this is my maxim. I
hold that the party receiving an obligation should ever remember
it, the party conferring should forget it immediately, if the one
is to act with honesty, the other without meanness. To remind
and speak of your own bounties is next door to reproaching. I
will not act so; nothing shall induce me. Whatever my reputa-
tion is in these respects, I am content with it.

I will have done then with private topics, but say another
word or two upon public. If you can mention, ^Eschines, a
single man under the sun, whether Greek or barbarian, who has
not suffered by Philip's power formerly and Alexander's now,

1744 DEMOSTHENES

well and good; I concede to you that my fortune, or misfortune
(if you please), has been the cause of everything. But if many
that never saw me or heard my voice have been grievously
afflicted, not individuals only but whole cities and nations, how
much juster and fairer is it to consider that to the common for-
tune apparently of all men, to a tide of events overwhelming and
lamentable, these disasters are to be attributed. You, disregard-
ing all this, accuse me whose ministry has been among my coun-
trymen, knowing all the while that a part (if not the whole) of
your calumny falls upon the people, and yourself in particular.
For if I assumed the sole and absolute direction of our counsels,
it was open to you, the other speakers, to accuse me; but if you
were constantly present in all the assemblies, if the State invited
public discussion of what was expedient, and if these measures
were then believed by all to be the best, and especially by you
(for certainly from no good-will did you leave me in possession
of hopes and admiration and honors, all of which attended on my
policy, but doubtless because you were compelled by the truth
and had nothing better to advise); is it not iniquitous and mon-
strous to complain now of measures, than which you could sug-
gest none better at the time ?

Among all other people I find these principles in a manner
defined and settled — Does a man willfully offend ? He is the
object of wrath and punishment. Hath a man erred uninten-
tionally ? There is pardon instead of punishment for him. Has
a man devoted himself to what seemed for the general good, and
without any fault or misconduct been in common with all disap-
pointed of success ? Such a one deserves not obloquy or re-
proach, but sympathy. These principles will not be found in
our statutes only; Nature herself has defined them by her un-
written laws and the feelings of humanity, ^schines, however,
has so far surpassed all men in brutality and malignity, that even
things which he cited himself as misfortunes he imputes to me
as crimes.

And besides, — as if he himself had spoken everything with
candor and good- will, — he told you to watch me, and mind that
I did not cajole and deceive you, calling me a great orator, a
juggler, a sophist, and the like: as though, if a man say of an-
other what applies to himself, it must be true, and the hearers
are not to inquire who the person is that makes the charge.
Certain am I that you are all acquainted with my opponent's

DEMOSTHENES

character, and believe these charges to be more applicable to
him than to me. And of this I am sure, that my oratory, — let
it be so: though, indeed, I find that the speaker's power depends
for the most part on the hearers; for according to your reception
and favor it is that the wisdom of a speaker is esteemed, — if I
however possess any ability of this sort, you will find it has been
exhibited always in public business on your behalf, never against
you or on personal matters; whereas that of ^schines has been
displayed not only in speaking for the enemy, but against all
persons who ever offended or quarreled with him. It is not for
justice or the good of the commonwealth that he employs it. A
citizen of worth and honor should not call upon judges impaneled
in the public service to gratify his anger or hatred or anything
of that kind; nor should he come before you upon such grounds.
The best thing is not to have these feelings; but, if it cannot
be helped, they should be mitigated and restrained.

On what occasions ought an orator and statesman to be vehe-
ment ? Where any of the commonwealth's main interests are in
jeopardy, and he is opposed to the adversaries of the people.
Those are the occasions for a generous and brave citizen. But
for a person who never sought to punish me for any offense, either
public or private, on the state's behalf or on his own, to have
got up an accusation because I am crowned and honored, and
to have expended such a multitude of words — this is a proof of
personal enmity and spite and meanness, not of anything good.
And then his leaving the controversy with me, and attacking
the defendant, comprises everything that is base.

I should conclude, ^Eschines, that you undertook this cause to
exhibit your eloquence and strength of lungs, not to obtain satis-
faction for any wrong. But it is not the language of an orator,
^schines, that has any value, nor yet the tone of his. voice, but
his adopting the same views with the people, and his hating and
loving the same persons that his country does. He that is thus
minded will say everything with loyal intention: he that courts
persons from whom the commonwealth apprehends danger to her-
self rides not on the same anchorage with the people, and there-
fore has not the same expectation of safety. But — do you see?
— I have: for my objects are the same with those of my coun-
trymen; I have no interest separate or distinct. Is that so with
you ? How can it be — when immediately after the battle you
went as embassador to Philip, who was at that period the author
v — no

1746

DEMOSTHENES

of your country's calamities, notwithstanding that you had before
persisted in refusing that office, as all men know ?

And who is it that deceives the state ? Surely the man who
speaks not what he thinks. On whom does the crier pronounce
a curse ? Surely on such a man. What greater crime can an
orator be charged with than that his opinions and his language
are not the same ? Such is found to be your character. And
yet you open your mouth, and dare to look these men in the
faces ! Do you think they don't know you ? — or are sunk all in
such slumber and oblivion as not to remember the speeches
which you delivered in the assembly, cursing and swearing that
you had nothing to do with Philip, and that I brought that charge
against you out of personal enmity, without foundation ? No
sooner came the news of the battle than you forgot all that; you
acknowledged and avowed that between Philip and yourself there
subsisted a relation of hospitality and friendship — new names
these for your contract of hire. For upon what plea of equality
or justice could ^Eschines, son of Glaucothea the timbrel player,
be the friend or acquaintance of Philip ? I cannot see. No !
You were hired to ruin the interests of your countrymen; and
yet, though you yourself have been caught in open treason, and
been informed against yourself after the fact, you revile and re-
proach me for things which you will find any man is chargeable
with sooner than I.

Many great and glorious enterprises has the commonwealth,
^Eschines, undertaken and succeeded in through me; and she did
not forget them. Here is the proof. On the election of a per-
son to speak the funeral oration immediately after the event,
you were proposed, but the people would not have you, notwith-
standing your fine voice, nor Demades, though he had just made
the peace, nor Hegemon, nor any other of your party — but me.
And when you and Pythocles came forward in a brutal and
shameful manner (O merciful heaven!) and urged the same ac-
cusations against me which you now do, and abused me, they
elected me all the more. The reason — you are not ignorant of
it — yet I will tell you. The Athenians knew as well the loyalty
and zeal with which I conducted their affairs, as the dishonesty of
you and your party; for what you denied upon oath in our pros-
perity, you confessed in the misfortunes of the republic. They
considered, therefore, that men who got security for their politics
by the public disasters had been their enemies long before, and

DEMOSTHENES

were then avowedly such. They thought it right, also, that the
person who was to speak in honor of the fallen and celebrate
their valor should not have sat under the same roof or at the
same table with their antagonists; that he should not revel there
and sing a paean over the calamities of Greece in company with
their murderers, and then come here and receive distinction; that
he should not with his voice act the mourner of their fate, but
that he should lament over them with his heart. This they per-
ceived in themselves and in me, but not in any of you: there-
fore they elected me, and not you. Nor, while the people felt
thus, did the fathers and brothers of the deceased, who were
chosen by the people to perform their obsequies, feel differently.
For having to order the funeral banquet (according to custom)
at the house of the nearest relative to the deceased, they ordered
it at mine. And with reason: because, though each to his own
was nearer of kin than I was, none was so near to them all col-
lectively. He that had the deepest interest in their safety and
success had upon their mournful disaster the largest share of
sorrow for them all.

Read him this epitaph, which the state chose to inscribe on
their monument, that you may see even by this, ^Eschines, what
a heartless and malignant wretch you are. Read.

"These are the patriot brave, who side by side
Stood to their arms, and dash'd the foeman's pride;
Firm in their valor, prodigal of life,
Hades they chose the arbiter of strife;
That Greeks might ne'er to haughty victors bow,
Nor thraldom's yoke, nor dire oppression know;
They fought, they bled, and on their country's breast
(Such was the doom of heaven) these warriors rest.
Gods never lack success, nor strive in vain,
But man must suffer what the fates ordain.*

Do you hear, ^Eschines, in this very inscription, that "gods
never lack success, nor strive in vain " ? Not to the statesman
does it ascribe the power of giving victory in battle, but to the
gods. Wherefore, then, execrable man, do you reproach me with
these things ? Wherefore utter such language ? I pray that it
may fall upon the heads of you and yours!

Many other accusations and falsehoods he urged against me,
O Athenians, but one thing surprised me more than all, that,

1748

DEMOSTHENES

when he mentioned the late misfortunes of the country, he felt
not as became a well-disposed and upright citizen; he shed no
tear, experienced no such emotion; with a loud voice exulting,
and straining his throat, he imagined apparently that he was ac-
cusing me, while he was giving proof against himself that our
distresses touched him not in the same manner as the rest. A
person who pretends, as he did, to care for the laws and consti-
tution, ought at least to have this about him, that he grieves
and rejoices for the same cause as the people, and not by his
politics to be enlisted in the ranks of the enemy, as yEschines
has plainly done, saying that I am the cause of all, and that the
commonwealth has fallen into troubles through me, when it was
not owing to my views or principles that you began to assist the
Greeks; for, if you conceded this to me, that my influence caused
you to resist the subjugation of Greece, it would be a higher
honor than any that you have bestowed upon others. I myself
would not make such an assertion — it would be doing you injus-
tice— nor would you allow it, I am sure; and ^Eschines, if he
acted honestly, would never, out of enmity to me, have dispar-
aged and defamed the greatest of your glories.

But why do I censure him for this when with calumny far
more shocking has he assailed me ? He that charges me with
Philippizing — O heaven and earth ! — what would he not say ?
By Hercules and the gods! if one had honestly to inquire, dis-
carding all expression of spite and falsehood, who the persons
really are on whom the blame of what has happened may by
common consent fairly and justly be thrown, it would be found
they are persons in the various states like ^Eschines, not like
me — persons who, while Philip's power was feeble and exceed-
ingly small, and we were constantly warning and exhorting and
giving salutary counsel, sacrificed the general interests for the
sake of selfish lucre, deceiving and corrupting their respective
countrymen, until they made them slaves — Daochus, Cineas,
Thrasylaus, the Thessalians, Cercidas, Hieronymus, Eucampidas,
the Arcadians; Myrtis, Teledamus, Mnaseas, the Argives; Euxi-
theus, Cleotimus, Aristsechmus, the Eleans; Neon and Thrasylo-
chus, sons of the accursed Philiades, the Messenians; Aristratus,
Epichares, the Sicyonians; Dinarchus, Demaratus, the Corinth-
ians; Ptoeodorus, Helixus, Perilaus, the Megarians; Timolaus,
Theogiton, Anemoetas, the Thebans; Hipparchus, Clitarchus, So-
sistratus, the Euboeans. The day will not last me to recount the

DEMOSTHENES

names of the traitors. All these, O Athenians, are men of the
same politics in their own countries as this party among you, —
profligates and parasites and miscreants, who have each of them
crippled their fatherlands; toasted away their liberty, first to
Philip and last to Alexander; who measure happiness by their
belly and all that is base, while freedom and independence, which
the Greeks of olden time regarded as the test and standard of
well-being, they have annihilated.

Of this base and infamous conspiracy and profligacy, — or
rather, O Athenians, if I am to speak in earnest, of this betrayal
of Grecian liberty, — Athens is by all mankind acquitted, owing to
my counsels; and I am acquitted by you. Then do you ask me,
^Eschines, for what merit I claim to be honored ? I will tell
you. Because, while all the statesmen in Greece, beginning with
yourself, have been corrupted formerly by Philip and now by
Alexander, me neither opportunity, nor fair speeches, nor large
promises, nor hope, nor fear, nor anything else, could tempt or in-
duce to betray aught that I considered just and beneficial to my
country. Whatever I have advised my fellow-citizens, I have
never advised like you men, leaning as in a balance to the side
of profit; all my proceedings have been those of a soul upright,
honest, and incorrupt; intrusted with affairs of greater magni-
tude than any of my contemporaries, I have administered them
all honestly and faithfully. Therefore do I claim to be honored.

As to this fortification, for which you ridiculed me, of the
wall and fosse, I regard them as deserving of thanks and praise,
and so they are; but I place them nowhere near my acts of
administration. Not with stones nor with bricks did I fortify
Athens, nor is this the ministry on which I most pride myself.
Would you view my fortifications aright, you will find arms and
states and posts and harbors and galleys and horses and men for
their defense. These are the bulwarks with which I protected
Attica as far as was possible by human wisdom; with these I
fortified our territory, not the circle of Piraeus or the city. Nay,
more; I was not beaten by Philip in estimates or preparations;
far from it; but the generals and forces of the allies were over-
come by his fortune. Where are the proofs of this? They are
plain and evident. Consider.

What was the course becoming a loyal citizen — a statesman
serving his country with all possible forethought and zeal and
fidelity? Should he not have covered Attica on the seaboard

DEMOSTHENES

with Euboea, on the midland frontier with Boeotia, on the
Peloponnesian with the people of that confine ? Should he not
have provided for the conveyance of corn along a friendly coast
all the way to Piraeus ? preserved certain places that belonged to
us by sending off succors, and by advising and moving accord-
ingly,— Proconnesus, Chersonesus, Tenedos ? brought others into
alliance and confederacy with us, — Byzantium, Abydus, Euboea ?
cut off the principal resources of the enemy, and supplied what
the commonwealth was deficient in ? All this has been accom-
plished by my decrees and measures; and whoever will examine
them without prejudice, men of Athens, will find they were
rightly planned and faithfully executed; that none of the proper
seasons were lost or missed or thrown away by me; nothing
which depended on one man's ability and prudence was neglected.
But if the power of some deity or fortune, or the worthlessness of
commanders, or the wickedness of you that betrayed your coun-
tries, or all these things together, injured and eventually ruined
our cause, of what is Demosthenes guilty? Had there been in
each of the Greek cities one such man as I was in my station
among you, or, rather, had Thessaly possessed one single man,
and Arcadia one, of the same sentiments as myself, none of the
Greeks either beyond or within Thermopylae would have suffered
their present calamities; all would have been free and indepen-
dent, living prosperously in their own countries with perfect
safety and security, thankful to you and the rest of the Athenians
for such manifold blessings through me.

To show you that I greatly understate my services for fear of
giving offense, here — read me this — the list of auxiliaries pro-
cured by my decrees. [The list is read.]

These and the like measures, ^Eschines, are what become an
honorable citizen (by their success — O earth and heaven! — we
should have been the greatest of people incontestably, and deserved
to be so: even under their failure the result is glory, and no one
blames Athens or her policy: all condemn fortune that so ordered
things ) ; but never will he desert the interests of the common-
wealth, nor hire himself to her adversaries, and study the enemy's
advantage instead of his country's; nor on a man who has cour-
age to advise and propose measures worthy of the state, and reso-
lution to persevere in them, will he cast an evil eye, and, if any
one privately offend him, remember and treasure it up; no, nor
keep himself in a criminal and treacherous retirement, as you so

DEMOSTHENES ,..,

often do. There is, indeed, a retirement just and beneficial to the
state, such as you, the bulk of my countrymen, innocently enjoy:
that, however, is not the retirement of ^Eschines; far from it.
Withdrawing himself from public life when he pleases, — and that
is often, — he watches for the moment when you are tired of a
constant speaker, or when some reverse of fortune has befallen
you, or anything untoward has happened (and many are the
casualties ot human life) : at such a crisis he springs up as an
orator, rising from his retreat like a wind; in full voice, with
words and phrases collected, he rolls them out audibly and breath-
lessly, to no advantage or good purpose whatsoever, but to the
detriment of some or other of his fellow-citizens and to the gen-
eral disgrace.

Yet from this labor and diligence, ^Eschines, if it proceeded
from an honest heart, solicitous for your country's welfare, the
fruits should have been rich and noble and profitable to all —
alliances of states, supplies of money, conveniences of commerce,
enactment of useful laws, opposition to our declared enemies.
All such things were looked for in former times, — and many op-
portunities did the past afford for a good man and true to show
himself, — during which time you are nowhere to be found, neither
first, second, third, fourth, fifth, nor sixth — not in any rank at
all — certainly on no service by which your country was exalted.
For what alliance has come to the state by your procurement ?
What succors, what acquisition of good-will or credit ? What em-
bassy or agency is there of yours, by which the reputation of
the country has been increased ? What concern domestic, Helle-
nic, or foreign, of which you have had the management, has
improved under it ? What galleys ? what ammunition ? what ar-
senals ? what repair of walls ? what cavalry ? What in the world
are you good for ? What assistance in money have you ever
given, either to the rich or the poor, out of public spirit or lib-
erality? None. But, good sir, if there is nothing of this, there
is at all events zeal and loyalty. Where ? when ? You infamous
fellow! Even at a time when all who ever spoke upon the plat-
form gave something for the public safety, and last Aristonicus
gave the sum which he had amassed to retrieve his franchise,
you neither came forward nor contributed a mite — not from in-
ability— no! for you have inherited above five talents from Philo,
your wife's father, and you had a subscription of two talents
from the chairmen of the boards for what you did to cut up the

DEMOSTHENES

navy law. But, that I may not go from one thing to another
and lose sight of the question, I pass this by. That it was not
poverty prevented your contributing, already appears; it was, in
fact, your anxiety to do nothing against those to whom your po-
litical life is subservient. On what occasions, then, do you show
your spirit ? When do you shine out ? When aught is to be
spoken against your countrymen! — then it is you are splendid
in voice, perfect in memory, an admirable actor, a tragic Theo-
crines.

You mention the good men of olden times; and you are right
so to do. Yet it is hardly fair, O Athenians, that he should get
the advantage of that respect which you have for the dead, to
compare and contrast me with them, — me who am living among
you; for what mortal is ignorant that toward the living there
exists always more or less of ill-will, whereas the dead are no
longer hated even by an enemy ? Such being human nature, am
I to be tried and judged by the standard of my predecessors ?
Heaven forbid! It is not just or equitable, ^Eschines. Let me
be compared with you, or any persons you like of your party
who are still alive. And consider this — whether it is more hon-
orable and better for the state, that because of the services of a
former age, prodigious though they are beyond all power of ex-
pression, those of the present generation should be unrequited
and spurned, or that all who give proof of their good intentions
should have their share of honor and regard from the people.
Yet, indeed, — if I must say so much, — my politics and principles,
if considered fairly, will be found to resemble those of the illus-
trious ancients, and to have had the same objects in view, while
yours resemble those of their calumniators; for it is certain there
were persons in those times who ran down the living, and praised
people dead and gone, with a malignant purpose like yourself.

You say that I am nothing like the ancients. Are you like
them, ./Eschines ? Is your brother, or any of our speakers ? I
assert that no one is. But pray, my good fellow (that I may give
you no other name), try the living with the living and with his
competitors, as you would in all cases — poets, dancers, athletes.
Philammon did not, because he was inferior to Glaucus of Carys-
tus and some other champions of a bygone age, depart un-
crowned from Olympia, but, because he beat all who entered the
ring against him, was crowned and proclaimed conqueror. So I
ask you to compare me with the orators of the day, with your-

DEMOSTHENES ,...

self, with anyone you like: I yield to none. When the common-
wealth was at liberty to choose for her advantage, and patriotism
was a matter of emulation, I showed myself a better counselor
than any, and every act of state was pursuant to my decrees
and laws and negotiations; none of your party was to be seen,
unless you had to do the Athenians a mischief. After that
lamentable occurrence, when there was a call no longer for ad-
visers, but for persons obedient to command, persons ready to
be hired against their country and willing to flatter strangers,
then all of you were in occupation, grand people with splendid
equipages; I was powerless, I confess, though more attached to
my countrymen than you.

Two things, men of Athens, are characteristic of a well-
disposed citizen, — so may I speak of myself and give the least
offense: — In authority, his constant aim should be the dignity
and pre-eminence of the commonwealth; in all times and circum-
stances his spirit should be loyal. This depends upon nature;
power and might upon other things. Such a spirit, you will
find, I have ever sincerely cherished. Only see. When my per-
son was demanded — when they brought Amphictyonic suits
against me — when they menaced — when they promised — when
they set these miscreants like wild beasts upon me — never in
any way have I abandoned my affection for you. From the very
beginning I chose an honest and straightforward course in poli-
tics, to support the honor, the power, the glory of my father-
land, these to exalt, in these to have my being. I do not walk
about the market place gay and cheerful because the stranger
has prospered, holding out my right hand and congratulating
those whom I think will report it yonder, and on any news of our
own success shudder and groan and stoop to the earth, like these
impious men who rail at Athens, as if in so doing they did not
rail at themselves; who look abroad, and if the foreigner thrive
by the distresses of Greece, are thankful for it, and say we
should keep him so thriving to all time.

Never, O ye gods, may those wishes be confirmed by you!
If possible, inspire even in these men a better sense and feeling!
But if they are, indeed, incurable, destroy them by themselves;
exterminate them on land and sea; and for the rest of us, grant
that we may speedily be released from our present fears, and
enjoy a lasting deliverance!

J754 DEMOSTHENES

THE SECOND OLYNTHIAC
(Delivered at Athens 349, B. C.)

ON MANY occasions, men of Athens, one may see the kindness
of the gods to this country manifested, but most signally, I
think, on the present. That here are men prepared for a
war with Philip, possessed of a neighboring territory and some
power, and (what is most important) so fixed in their hostility as
to regard any accommodation with him as insecure, and even
ruinous to their country; this really appears like an extraordinary
act of divine beneficence. It must then be our care, Athenians,
that we are not more unkind to ourselves than circumstances
have been; as it would be a foul, a most foul reproach, to have
abandoned not only cities and places that once belonged to us,
but also the allies and advantages provided by fortune.

To dilate, Athenians, on Philip's power, and by such discourse
to incite you to your duty, I think improper : and why ? Be-
cause all that may be said on that score involves matter of glory
for him, and misconduct on our part. The more he has tran-
scended his repute, the more is he universally admired; you, as
you have used your advantages unworthily, have incurred the
greater disgrace. This topic, then, I shall pass over. Indeed,
Athenians, a correct observer will find the source of his great-
ness here, and not in himself. But of measures, for which
Philip's partisans deserve his gratitude and your vengeance, I
see no occasion to speak now. Other things are open to me,
which it concerns you all to know, and which must, on a due
examination, Athenians, reflect great disgrace on Philip. To
these will I address myself.

To call him perjured and treacherous, without showing what
he has done, might justly be termed idle abuse. But to go
through all his actions and convict him in detail, will take, as it
happens, but a short time, and is expedient, I think, for two
reasons: Firstly, that his baseness may appear in its true light;
secondly, that they, whose terror imagines Philip to be invincible,
may see he has run through all the artifices by which he rose to
greatness, and his career is just come to an end. I myself, men
of Athens, should most assuredly have regarded Philip as an ob-
ject of fear and admiration, had I seen him exalted by honorable

DEMOSTHENES ,...

conduct; but observing and considering, I find that in the be-
ginning, when certain persons drove away the Olynthians who
desired a conference with us, he gained over our simplicity by
engaging to surrender Amphipolis, and to execute the secret
article once so famous; afterward he got the friendship of the
Olynthians, by taking Potidaea from you, wronging you, his former
allies, and delivering it to them; and lastly now the Thessalians,
by promising to surrender Magnesia, and undertake the Phocian
war on their behalf. In short, none who have dealt with him
has he not deceived. He has risen by conciliating and cajoling
the weakness of every people in turn who knew him not. As,
therefore, by such means he rose, when every people imagined
he would advance their interest, so ought he by the same means
to be pulled down again, when the selfish aim of his whole
policy is exposed.

To this crisis, O Athenians, are Philip's affairs come; or let
any man stand forward and prove to me, or rather to you, that
my assertions are false, or that men whom Philip has once over-
reached will trust him hereafter, or that the Thessalians who
have been degraded into servitude would not gladly become
free.

But if any among you, though agreeing in these statements,
think that Philip will maintain his power by having occupied
forts and havens and the like, this is a mistake. True, when a
confederacy subsists by good-will, and all parties to the war have
a common interest, men are willing to co-operate and bear hard-
ships and persevere. But when one has grown strong, like
Philip, by rapacity and artifice, on the first pretext, the slightest
reverse, all is overturned and broken up. Impossible is it, — im-
possible, Athenians, — to acquire a solid power by injustice and
perjury and falsehood. Such things last for once, or for a short
period; maybe, they blossom fairly with hope; but in time they
are discovered and drop away. As a house, a ship, or the like,
ought to have the lower parts firmest, so in human conduct, I
ween, the principle and foundation should be just and true. But
this is not so in Philip's conduct.

I say, then, we should at once aid the Olynthians (the best
and quickest way that can be suggested will please me most),
and send an embassy to the Thessalians, to inform some of our
measures and to stir up the rest; for they have now resolved to
demand Pagasae, and remonstrate about Magnesia. But look to

DEMOSTHENES

this, Athenians, that our envoys shall not only make speeches, but
have some real proof that we have gone forth as becomes our
country, and are engaged in action. All speech without action
appears vain and idle, but especially that of our commonwealth;
as the more we are thought to excel therein, the more is our
speaking distrusted by all. You must show yourselves greatly
reformed, greatly changed, contributing, serving personally, acting
promptly, before any one will pay attention to you. And if ye
will perform these duties properly and becomingly, Athenians,
not only will it appear that Philip's alliances are weak and pre-
carious, but the poor state of his native empire and power will
be revealed.

To speak roundly, the Macedonian power and empire is very
well as a help, as it was for you in Timotheus's time against the
Olynthians; likewise for them against Potidaea the conjunction
was important; and lately it aided the Thessalians in their broils
and troubles against the regnant house: and the accession of any
power, however small, is undoubtedly useful. But the Macedon-
ian is feeble of itself, and full of defects. The very operations
which seem to constitute Philip's greatness, his wars and his ex-
peditions, have made it more insecure than it was originally.
Think not, Athenians, that Philip and his subjects have the same
likings. He desires glory, makes that his passion, is ready for
any consequence of adventure and peril, preferring to a life of
safety the honor of achieving what no Macedonian king ever did
before. They have no share in the glorious result; ever harassed
by these excursions up and down, they suffer and toil incessantly,
allowed no leisure for their employments or private concerns,
unable even to dispose of their hard earnings, the markets of
the country being closed on account of the war. By this, then,
may easily be seen how the Macedonians in general are dis-
posed to Philip. His mercenaries and guards, indeed, have the
reputation of admirable and well -trained soldiers, but, as I
heard from one who had been in the country, a man incapable
of falsehood, they are no better than others. For if there be
any among them experienced in battles and campaigns, Philip is
jealous of such men and drives them away, he says, wishing
to keep the glory of all actions to himself, — his jealousy (among
other failings) being excessive. Or if any man be generally
good and virtuous, unable to bear Philip's daily intemperances,
drunkenness, and indecencies, he is pushed aside and accounted

DEMOSTHENES

as nobody. The rest about him are brigands and parasites
and men of that character, who will get drunk and perform
dances which I scruple to name before you. My information is
undoubtedly true; for persons whom all scouted here as worse
rascals than mountebanks, Callias the town-slave and the like of
him, antic- jesters and composers of ribald songs to lampoon their
companions, such persons Philip caresses and keeps about him.
Small matters these may be thought, Athenians, but to the wise
they are strong indications of his character and wrong-headedness.
Success, perhaps, throws a shade over them now; prosperity is a
famous hider of such blemishes; but on any miscarriage they
will be fully exposed. And this (trust me, Athenians) will appear
in no long time, if the gods so will and you determine. For as
in the human body, a man in health feels not partial ailments,
but, when illness occurs, all are in motion, whether it be a rup-
ture or a sprain or anything else unsound, so with states and
monarchs, while they wage eternal war, their weaknesses are un-
discerned by most men, but the tug of a frontier war betrays all.
If any of you think Philip a formidable opponent because
they see he is fortunate, such reasoning is prudent, Athenians.
Fortune has, indeed, a great preponderance — nay, is everything
in human affairs. Not but that, if I had the choice, I should
prefer our fortune to Philip's, would you but moderately perform
your duty. For I see you have many more claims to the divine
favor than he has. But we sit doing nothing; and a man idle
himself cannot require even his friends to act for him, much less
the gods. No wonder, then, that he, marching and toiling in
person, present on all occasions, neglecting no time or season,
prevails over us delaying and voting and inquiring. I marvel
not at that; the contrary would have been marvelous, if we, do-
ing none of the duties of war, had beaten one doing all. But
this surprises me that formerly, Athenians, you resisted the Lace-
daemonians for the rights of Greece, and rejecting many oppor-
tunities of selfish gain, to secure the rights of others, expended
your property in contributions, and bore the brunt of the battle;
yet now you are loath to serve, slow to contribute, in defense of
your own possessions, and, though you have often saved the other
nations of Greece collectively and individually, under your own
losses you sit still. This surprises me, and one thing more,
Athenians, that not one of you can reckon how long your war
with Philip has lasted, and what you have been doing while the

I7c;8 DEMOSTHENES

time has passed. You surely know that while you have been
delaying, expecting others to act, accusing, trying one another,
expecting again, doing much the same as ye do now, all the
time has passed away. Then are ye so senseless, Athenians, as
to imagine that the same measures which have brought the
country from a prosperous to a poor condition will bring it from
a poor to a prosperous ? Unreasonable were this and unnatural ;
for all things are easier kept than gotten. The war now has
left us nothing to keep; we have all to get, and the work must
be done by ourselves.

I say, then, you must contribute money, serve in person with
alacrity, accuse no one, till you have gained your objects; then,
judging from facts, honor the deserving, punish offenders; let
there be no pretenses or defaults on your own part; for you can
not harshly scrutinize the conduct of others, unless you have
done what is right yourselves. Why, think you, do all the gen-
erals whom you commission avoid this war and seek wars of
their own ? ( For of the generals, too, must a little truth be told.)
Because here the prizes of the war are yours; for example, if
Amphipolis be taken, you will immediately recover it; the com-
manders have all the risk and no reward. But in the other case
the risks are less, and the gains belong to the commanders and
soldiers; Lampsacus, Sigeum, the vessels which they plunder.
So they proceed to secure their several interests: you, when you
look at the bad state of your affairs, bring the generals to trial;
but when they get a hearing and plead these necessities, you dis-
miss them. The result is that, while you are quarreling and
divided, some holding one opinion, some another, the common-
wealth goes wrong. Formerly, Athenians, you had boards for
taxes; now you have boards for politics. There is an orator pre-
siding on either side, a general under him, and three hundred
men to shout; the rest of you are attached to the one party or
the other. This you must leave off; be yourselves again; estab-
lish a general liberty of speech, deliberation, and action. If some
be appointed to command as with royal authority, some to be
ship captains, tax payers, soldiers by compulsion, others only to
vote against them, and help in nothing besides, no duty will be
seasonably performed; the aggrieved parties will still fail you,
and you will have to punish them instead of your enemies. I
say, in short, you must all fairly contribute, according to each
man's ability; take your turns of service till you have all been

DEMOSTHENES

afield; give every speaker a hearing, and adopt the best counsel,
not what this or that person advises. If ye act thus, not only
will ye praise the speaker at the moment, but yourselves after-
ward, when the condition of the country is improved.

THE ORATION ON THE PEACE
(Delivered at Athens 346, B.C.)

I SEE, men of Athens, our affairs are in great perplexity and
confusion, not only because many interests have been sacri-
ficed, and it is useless to make fine speeches about them, but
because, for preserving what remains, you cannot agree upon
any single expedient, some holding one opinion, and some an-
other. And besides, perplexing and difficult as deliberation of
itself is, you, Athenians, have rendered it far more so. For other
men usually hold counsel before action, you hold it after; the
result of which during all the time of my remembrance has been
that the censurer of your errors gets repute and credit as a good
speaker, while your interests and objects of deliberation are lost.
Yet, even under these circumstances, I believe, and I have risen
with the persuasion, that if you will desist from wrangling and
tumult, and listen as becomes men on a political consultation of
such importance, I shall be able to suggest and advise measures
by which our affairs may be improved and our losses retrieved.
Well as I know, Athenians, that to talk before you of one's
self and one's own counsels is a successful artifice with unscru-
pulous men, I think it so vulgar and offensive that I shrink
from it even in a case of necessity. However, I think you will
better appreciate what I shall say now, by calling to mind a
little that I said on former occasions. For example, Athenians,
when they were advising you in the troubles of Euboea to assist
Plutarch, and undertake a discreditable and expensive war, I, and
I alone, stood forward to oppose it, and was nearly torn to pieces
by the men who for petty lucre have seduced you into many
grievous errors. A short time later, when you incurred disgrace
and suffered what no mortals ever did from parties whom they
assisted, you all acknowledged the worthlessness of their counsels
who misled you and the soundness of mine. Again, Athenians,
when I saw that Neoptolemus the actor, privileged under color of

1760

DEMOSTHENES

Ms profession, was doing serious mischief to the state, manag-
ing and directing things at Athens on Philip's behalf, I came
and informed you, not from any private enmity or malice, as sub-
sequent occurrences have shown. And herein I shall not blame
the advocates of Neoptolemus (for there were none), but you
yourselves; for had you been seeing a tragedy in the temple of
Bacchus, instead of it being a debate on the public weal and
safety, you could not have heard him with more partiality, or me
with more intolerance. But I suppose you all now understand
that he made his journey to the enemy in order (as he said) to
get the debts there owing to him, and defray thereout his public
charges at home; and, after urging this argument, that it was
hard to reproach men who brought over their effects from abroad
as soon as he obtained security through the peace, he converted
into money all the real estate which he possessed here, and has
gone off with it to Philip. Thus two of my warnings, justly and
rightfully pronounced in accordance with the truth, testify in my
favor as a counselor. A third, men of Athens, I will mention,
this one only, and straight proceed to the subject of my address.
When we embassadors, after receiving the oaths on the peace,
had returned, and certain men were promising that Thespiae and
Plataea would be repeopled; that Philip, if he got the mastery,
would save the Phocians, and disperse the population of Thebes;
that Oropus would be yours, and Euboea given as compensation
for Amphipolis, with more of the like hopes and delusions which
led you on, against policy, equity, and honor, to abandon the
Phocians; you will find I neither aided in any of these deceits,
nor held my tongue. I warned you, as you surely remember,
that I knew not of these things nor expected them, and deemed
it all idle gossip.

These instances, wherein I have shown greater foresight than
others, I mention not by way of boast, nor ascribe, Athenians, to
any sagacity of my own, nor will I pretend to discover or discern
the future from any but two causes, which I will state: Firstly,
men of Athens, through good fortune, which I observe beats all
the craft and cleverness of man; secondly, because I judge and
estimate things disinterestedly, and no one can show that any
lucre is attached to my politics or my speeches. Therefore,
whatever be your true policy as indicated by the circumstances,
I have a correct view of it; but when you put money on one
side as in a balance, it carries away and pulls down the judg-

DEMOSTHENES

1761

ment with it, and he that does so can no longer reason upon
anything justly or soundly.

The first thing which I maintain to be necessary is this:
Whether you seek to obtain allies or contribution or aught else
for the state, do it without disturbing the present peace; not
that it is very glorious or worthy of you, but, whatever be its
character, it had better suited our interests never to have made
peace than to break it ourselves, for we have thrown away many
advantages which would have rendered the war then safer and
easier for us than it can be now. Secondly, Athenians, we must
take care that these people assembled and calling themselves
Amphictyons are not by us necessitated or furnished with a plea
to make a common war against us. I grant, if we renewed the
war with Philip on account of Amphipolis or any such private
quarrel in which Thessalians, Argives, and Thebans are not con-
cerned, none of them would join in it, and least of all — hear
me before you cry out — the Thebans; not that they are kindly
disposed to us or would not gratify Philip, but they see clearly,
stupid as one may think them, that, if they had a war with you,
the hardships would all be theirs, while another sat waiting for
the advantages. Therefore, they would not throw themselves
into it, unless the ground and origin of the war were common.
So if we again went to war with the Thebans for Oropus or any
private cause, I should fear no disaster, because our respective
auxiliaries would assist us or them, if either country were in-
vaded, but would join with neither in aggression. Such is the
spirit of alliances that are worth regard, and so the thing natur-
ally is. People are not friendly either to us or the Thebans to
the extent of equally desiring our safety and our predominance.
Safe they would all have us for their own sakes; dominant, so
as to become their masters, they would not have either of us.
What then, say I, is the danger ? What is to be guarded against,
lest in the coming war there be found a common plea, a com-
mon grievance for all ? If Argives, and Messenians, and Megal-
opolitans, and some of the other Peloponnesians, who are in league
with them, are hostile to us on account of our negotiating with
the Lacedaemonians and seeming to take up some of their enter-
prises; if the Thebans are (as they say) our enemies, and will be
more so, because we harbor their exiles and in every way mani-
fest our aversion to them; Thessalians again, because we harbor
the Phocian exiles, and Philip, because we oppose his admission
v — in

1762

DEMOSTHENES

to the Amphictyonic body; I fear that, each incensed on a pri-
vate quarrel, they will combine to bring war upon you, setting
up the decrees of the Amphictyons, and be drawn on (beyond
what their single interests require) to battle it with us, as they
did with the Phocians. For you are surely aware that now the
Thebans and Philip and the Thessalians have co-operated, with-
out having each exactly the same views. For example, the
Thebans could not hinder Philip from advancing and occupying
the passes, nor yet from coming last and having the credit of
their labors. True, in respect of territorial acquisition, something
has been done for them; but in regard to honor and reputation,
they have fared wretchedly; since, had Philip not stepped in,
they would (it seems) have got nothing. This was not agreeable
to them, but having the wish without the power to obtain
Orchomenos and Coronea, they submitted to it all. Of Philip,
you know, some persons venture to say that he would not have
given Orchomenos and Coronea to the Thebans, but was com-
pelled to do so. I wish them joy of their opinion, but thus far I
believe that he cared not so much about that business as he de-
sired to occupy the passes and have the glory of the war, as
being determined by his agency and the direction of the Pythian
games. Such were the objects of his ambition. The Thessalians
wished not either Philip or Thebes to be aggrandized, since in
both they saw danger to themselves, but sought to obtain these
two advantages, the synod at Thermopylae, and the privileges at
Delphi; for which objects they aided the confederacy. Thus you
will find that each party has been led into many acts unwill-
ingly : and against this danger being such as I describe, you must
take precautions.

Must we, then, do as we are bidden for fear of the conse-
quences ? and do you recommend this ? Far from it. I advise
you so to act as not to compromise your dignity, to avoid war,
to prove yourselves right-thinking, just-speaking men. With those
who think we should boldly suffer anything and do not foresee
the war, I would reason thus. We permit the Thebans to have
Oropus; and if one ask us why, and require a true answer,
we should say, To avoid war. And to Philip now we have ceded
Amphipolis by treaty, and allow the Cardians to be excepted
from the other people of the Chersonese; and the Carian to seize
the islands Chios, Cos, and Rhodes, and the Byzantines to detain
our vessels; evidently because we think the tranquillity of peace

DEMOSTHENES

1763

more beneficial than strife and contest about such questions. It
were folly then and utter absurdity after dealing thus with each
party singly on matters of vital moment to ourselves, to battle
now with them all for a shadow at Delphi.

THE SECOND PHILIPPIC
(Delivered at Athens 344, B. C.)

IN ALL the speeches, men of Athens, about Philip's measures and
infringements of the peace, I observe that statements made on

our behalf are thought just and generous, and all who accuse
Philip are heard with approbation ; yet nothing ( I may say ) that is
proper, or for the sake of which the speeches are worth hearing,
is done. To this point are the affairs of Athens brought, that the
more fully and clearly one convicts Philip of violating the peace
with you, and plotting against the whole of Greece, the more diffi-
cult it becomes to advise you how to act. The cause lies in all of
us, Athenians, that, when we ought to oppose an ambitious power
by deeds and actions, not by words, we men of the hustings
shrink from our duty of moving and advising, for fear of your
displeasure, and only declaim on the heinousness and atrocity of
Philip's conduct; you of the assembly, though better instructed
than Philip to argue justly, or comprehend the argument of an-
other, are totally unprepared to check him in the execution of
his designs. The result is inevitable, I imagine, and perhaps
just. You each succeed better in what you are busy and earnest
about; Philip in actions, you in words. If you are still satisfied
with using the better arguments, it is an easy matter, and there
is no trouble: but if we are to take measures for the correction
of these evils, to prevent their insensible progress and the rising
up of a mighty power, against which we could have no defense,
then our course of deliberation is not the same as formerly;
the orators, and you that hear them, must prefer good and salu-
tary counsels to those which are easy and agreeable.

First, men of Athens, if any one regard without uneasiness
the might and dominion of Philip, and imagine that it threatens
no danger to the state, or that all his preparations are not against
you, I marvel, and would entreat you every one to hear briefly
from me the reasons why I am led to form a contrary expecta-
tion, and wherefore I deem Philip an enemy; that, if I appear

1764

DEMOSTHENES

to have the clearer foresight, you may hearken to me; if they,
who have such confidence and trust in Philip, you may give your
adherence to them.

Thus, then, I reason, Athenians. What did Philip first make
himself master of after the peace ? Thermopylae and the Phocian
state. Well, and how used he his power ? He chose to act for
the benefit of Thebes, not of Athens. Why so ? Because, I
conceive, measuring his calculations by ambition, by his desire of
universal empire, without regard to peace, quiet, or justice, he
saw plainly that to a people of our character and principles
nothing could he offer or give that would induce you for self-
interest to sacrifice any of the Greeks to him. He sees that you,
having respect for justice, dreading the infamy of the thing, and
exercising proper forethought, would oppose him in any such
attempt as much as if you were at war: but the Thebans, he
expected (and events prove him right), would, in return for the
services done them, allow him in everything else to have his
way, and, so far from thwarting or impeding him, would fight
on his side if he required it. From the same persuasion he be-
friended lately the Messenians and Argives, which is the highest
panegyric upon you, Athenians; for you are adjudged by these
proceedings to be the only people incapable of betraying for
lucre the national rights of Greece, or bartering your attachment
to her for any obligation or benefit. And this opinion of you,
that (so different) of the Argives and Thebans, he has naturally
formed, not only from a view of present times, but by reflection
on the past. For assuredly he finds and hears that your ances-
tors, who might have governed the rest of Greece on terms of
submitting to Persia, not only spurned the proposal, when Alex-
ander, this man's ancestor, came as herald to negotiate, but pre-
ferred to abandon their country and endure any suffering, and
thereafter achieved such exploits as all the world loves to men-
tion, — though none could ever speak them worthily, and therefore
I must be silent, for their deeds are too mighty to be uttered in
words. But the forefathers of the Argives and Thebans, they
either joined the barbarian's army, or did not oppose it; and
therefore he knows that both will selfishly embrace their advan-
tage, without considering the common interest of the Greeks.
He thought then, if he chose your friendship, it must be on
just principles; if he attached himself to them, he should find
auxiliaries of his ambition. This is the reason of his preferring

DEMOSTHENES

1765

them to you both then and now. For certainly he does not see
them with a larger navy than you, nor has he acquired an inland
empire and renounced that of the sea and the ports, nor does
he forget the professions and promises on which he obtained the
peace.

Well, it may be said, he knew all this, yet he so acted, not
from ambition or the motives which I charge, but because the
demands of the Thebans were more equitable than yours. Of
all pleas, this now is the least open to him. He that bids the
Lacedaemonians resign Messene, how can he pretend, when he
delivered Orchomenos and Coronea to the Thebans, to have
acted on a conviction of justice ?

But, forsooth, he was compelled, — this plea remains, — he
made concessions against his will, being surrounded by Thes-
salian horse and Theban infantry. Excellent! So of his inten-
tions they talk; he will mistrust the Thebans; and some carry
news about, that he will fortify Elatea. All this he intends and
will intend, I dare say; but to attack the Lacedaemonians on
behalf of Messene and Argos he does not intend; he actually
sends mercenaries and money into the country, and is expected
himself with a great force. The Lacedaemonians, who are ene-
mies of Thebes, he overthrows; the Phocians, whom he himself
before destroyed, will he now preserve ?

And who can believe this ? I cannot think that Philip, either
if he were forced into his former measures, or if he were now
giving up the Thebans, would pertinaciously oppose their en-
emies; his present conduct rather shows that he adopted those
measures by choice. All things prove to a correct observer that
his whole plan of action is against our state. And this has now
become to him a sort of necessity. Consider. He desires empire:
he conceives you to be his only opponents. He has been for
some time wronging you, as his own conscience best informs
him, since, by retaining what belongs to you, he secures the rest
of his dominion: had he given up Amphipolis and Potidaea, he
deemed himself unsafe at home. He knows, therefore, both that
he is plotting against you, and that you are aware of it; and,
supposing you to have intelligence, he thinks you must hate him;
he is alarmed, expecting some disaster, if you get the chance,
unless he hastes to prevent you. Therefore he is awake, and on
the watch against us; he courts certain people, Thebans, and
people in Peloponnesus of the like views, who from cupidity, he

1766

DEMOSTHENES

thinks, will be satisfied with the present, and from dullness of
understanding will foresee none of the consequences. And yet
men of even moderate sense might notice striking facts, which I
had occasion to quote to the Messenians and Argives, and per-
haps it is better they should be repeated to you.

Ye men of Messene, said I, how do ye think the Olynthians
would have brooked to hear anything against Philip at those
times, when he surrendered to them Anthemus, which all former
kings of Macedonia claimed, when he cast out the Athenian
colonists and gave them Potidaea, taking on himself your enmity,
and giving them the land to enjoy ? Think ye they expected
such treatment as they got, or would have believed it if they
had been told ? Nevertheless, said I, they, after enjoying for a
short time the land of others, are for a long time deprived by
him of their own, shamefully expelled, not only vanquished, but
betrayed by one another and sold. In truth, these too close con-
nections with despots are not safe for republics. The Thessa-
lians, again, think ye, said I, when he ejected their tyrants, and
gave back Nicsea and Magnesia, they expected to have the de-
cemvirate which is now established ? or that he who restored the
meeting at Pylae would take away their revenues ? Surely not.
And yet these things have occurred, as all mankind may know.
You behold Philip, I said, a dispenser of gifts and promises:
pray, if you are wise, that you may never know him for a cheat
and a deceiver. By Jupiter, I said, there are manifold contriv-
ances for the guarding and defending of cities, such as ram-
parts, walls, trenches, and the like : these are all made with hands,
and require expense; but there is one common safeguard in
the nature of prudent men, which is a good security for all, but
especially for democracies against despots. What do I mean ?
Mistrust. Keep this, hold to this, preserve this only, and you
can never be injured. What do ye desire ? Freedom. Then see
ye not that Philip's very titles are at variance therewith ? Every
king and despot is a foe to freedom, an antagonist to laws. Will
you not beware, I said, lest, seeking deliverance from war, you
find a master ?

They heard me with a tumult of approbation; and many other
speeches they heard from the embassadors, both in my presence
and afterward; yet none the more, as it appears, will they keep
aloof from Philip's friendship and promises. And no wonder
that Messenians and certain Peloponnesians should act contrary

DEMOSTHENES

1767

to what their reason approves; but you, who understand your-
selves, and by us orators are told, how you are plotted against,
how you are inclosed ! you, I fear, to escape present exertion, will
come to ruin ere you are aware. So doth the moment's ease and
indulgence prevail over distant advantage.

As to your measures, you will in prudence, I presume, consult
hereafter by yourselves. I will furnish you with such an answer
as it becomes the assembly to decide upon. [Here the proposed
answer was read.]

It were just, men of Athens, to call the persons who brought
those promises on the faith whereof you concluded peace. For
I should never have submitted to go as embassador, and you
would certainly not have discontinued the war, had you supposed
that Philip, on obtaining peace, would act thus; but the state-
ments then made were very different. Aye, and others you
should call. Whom ? The men who declared — after the peace,
when I had returned from my second mission, that for the oaths,
when, perceiving your delusion, I gave warning and protested,
and opposed the abandonment of Thermopylae and the Phocians
— that I, being a water-drinker, was naturally a churlish and
morose fellow, that Philip, if he passed the straits, would do
just as you desired, fortify Thespias and Plataea, humble the The-
bans, cut through the Chersonese at his own expense, and give
you Oropus and Euboea in exchange for Amphipolis. All these
declarations on the hustings I am sure you remember, though
you are not famous for remembering injuries. And, the most
disgraceful thing of all, you voted in your confidence that this
same peace should descend to your posterity, — so completely were
you misled. Why mention I this now, and desire these men to be
called ? By the gods, I will tell you the truth frankly and with-
out reserve. Not that I may fall a-wrangling to provoke recrim-
ination before you, and afford my old adversaries a fresh pretext
for getting more from Philip, nor for the purpose of idle garrul-
ity. But I imagine that what Philip is doing will grieve you
hereafter more than it does now. I see the thing progressing,
and would that my surmises were false; but I doubt it is too
near already. So when you are able no longer to disregard
events, when, instead of hearing from me or others that these
measures are against Athens, you all see it yourselves, and know
it for certain, I expect you will be wrathful and exasperated. I
fear then, as your embassadors have concealed the purpose for

1768

DEMOSTHENES

which they know they were corrupted, those who endeavor to
repair what the others have lost may chance to encounter your
resentment; for I see it is a practice with many to vent their
anger, not upon the guilty, but on persons most in their power.
While, therefore, the mischief is only coming and preparing, while
we hear one another speak, I wish every man, though he knows
it well, to be reminded who it was persuaded you to abandon
Phocis and Thermopylae, by the command of which Philip com-
mands the road to Attica and Peloponnesus, and has brought it
to this, that your deliberation must be, not about claims and in-
terests abroad, but concerning the defense of your home and a
war in Attica, which will grieve every citizen when it comes,
and indeed it has commenced from that day. Had you not been
then deceived there would be nothing to distress the state. Philip
would certainly never have prevailed at sea and come to Attica
with a fleet, nor would he have marched with a land force by
Phocis and Thermopylae; he must either have acted honorably,
observing the peace and keeping quiet, or been immediately in a
war similar to that which made him desire the peace. Enough
has been said to awaken recollection. Grant, O ye gods, it be
not all fully confirmed! I would have no man punished, though
death he may deserve, to the damage and danger of the country.

Y

CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW.

Photogravure after a Recent Photograph,

1769

CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW

(1834-)

[AKING his first reputation for oratory by the facility and grace
of his "after-dinner speeches," Chauncey Mitchell Depew
has gradually enlarged his field until, during the last decade
of the nineteenth century, he has been easily first among New York
orators, with a reputation which has become international and has
made his speeches as welcome in London as they are in New York.
He was born at Peekskill, New York, April 23d, 1834. Graduating
at Yale in 1856, he studied law and entered public life as a mem-
ber of the New York Assembly (1861-62); from 1863 to 1865, he was
Secretary of State for New York, and in 1869 he formed a connec-
tion with the New York Central Railroad as its counsel, which de-
termined his future career. He became president of the road in
1885. In 1898 was elected to the United States Senate.

. THE COLUMBIAN ORATION

( Delivered at the Dedication Ceremonies of the World's Fair at Chicago,

October 2ist, 1892)

THIS day belongs not to America, but to the world. The re-
sults of the event it commemorates are the heritage of the
peoples of every race and clime. We celebrate the emanci-
pation of man. The preparation was the work of almost count-
less centuries; the realization was the revelation of one. The
cross on Calvary was hope; the cross raised on San Salvador
was opportunity. But for the first, Columbus would never have
sailed; but for the second, there would have been no place for
the planting, the nurture, and the expansion of civil and religious
liberty. Ancient history is a dreary record of unstable civiliza-
tions. Each reached its zenith of material splendor, and perished.
The Assyrian, Persian, Egyptian, Grecian, and Roman empires
were proofs of the possibilities and limitations of man for con-
quest and intellectual development. Their destruction involved
a sum of misery and relapse which made their creation rather a
curse than a blessing. Force was the factor in the government

1770

CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW

of the world when Christ was born, and force was the source
and exercise of authority both by Church and State when Co-
lumbus sailed from Palos. The Wise Men traveled from the
East towards the West under the guidance of the Star of Beth-
lehem. The spirit of the equality of all men before God and the
law moved westward from Calvary with its revolutionary influence
upon old institutions, to the Atlantic Ocean. Columbus carried it
westward across the seas. The emigrants from England, Ireland,
Scotland, and Wales, from Germany and Holland, from Sweden
and Denmark, from France and Italy, from Spain and Portugal,
under its guidance and inspiration, moved west, and again west,
building states and founding cities until the Pacific limited their
march. The exhibition of arts and sciences, of industries and in-
ventions, of education and civilization, which the Republic of the
United States will here present, and to which, through its Chief
Magistrate, it invites all nations, condenses and displays the
flower and fruitage of this transcendent miracle.

The anarchy and chaos which followed the breaking up of
the Roman Empire necessarily produced the feudal system. The
people, preferring slavery to annihilation by robber chiefs, be-
came the vassals of territorial lords. The reign of physical force
is one of perpetual struggle for the mastery. Power which rests
upon the sword neither shares nor limits its authority. The
king destroyed the lords, and the monarchy succeeded feudalism.
Neither of these institutions considered or consulted the people.
They had no part but to suffer or die in this mighty strife of
masters for the mastery. But the throne, by its broader view
and greater resources, made possible the construction of the
highways of freedom. Under its banner, races could unite and
petty principalities be merged, law substituted for brute force
and right for might. It founded and endowed universities, and
encouraged commerce. It conceded no political privileges, but
unconsciously prepared its subjects to demand them.

Absolutism in the State and intolerance in the Church
shackled popular unrest, and imprisoned thought and enterprise
in the fifteenth century. The divine right of kings stamped out
the faintest glimmer of revolt against tyranny, and the problems
of science, whether of the skies or of . the earth, whether of
astronomy or geography, were solved or submerged by ecclesias-
tical decrees. The dungeon was ready for the philosopher who
proclaimed the truths of the solar system, or the navigator who

CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW ,7?I

would prove the sphericity of the earth. An English Gladstone,
or a French Gambetta, or a German Bismarck, or an Italian Gar-
ibaldi, or a Spanish Castelar, would have been thought a monster,
and his death at the stake, or on the scaffold, and under the
anathemas of the Church, would have received the praise and
approval of kings and nobles, of priests and peoples. Reason had
no seat in spiritual or temporal realms. Punishment was the in-
centive to patriotism, and piety was held possible by torture.
Confessions of faith extorted from the writhing victim on the
rack were believed efficacious in saving his soul from fires eternal
beyond the grave. For all that humanity to-day cherishes as its
best heritage and choicest gifts, there was neither thought nor
hope.

Fifty years before Columbus sailed from Palos, Guttenberg and
Faust had forged the hammer which was to break the bonds of
superstition and open the prison doors of the mind. They had
invented the printing press and movable types. The prior adop-
tion of a cheap process for the manufacture of paper at once
utilized the press. Its first service, like all its succeeding efforts,
was for the people. The universities and the schoolmen, the
privileged and the learned few of that age, were longing for the
revelation and preservation of the classic treasures of antiq-
uity, hidden, and yet insecure in monastic cells and libraries.
But the firstborn of the marvelous creation of these primitive
printers of Mayence was the printed Bible. The priceless con-
tributions of Greece and Rome to the intellectual training and
development of the modern world came afterwards, through the
same wondrous machine. The force, however, which made pos-
sible America and its reflex influence upon Europe was the open
Bible by the family fireside. And yet neither the enlightenment
of the new learning, nor the dynamic power of the spiritual
awakening, could break through the crust of caste which had
been forming for centuries. Church and State had so firmly and
dexterously interwoven the bar's of privilege and authority that
liberty was impossible from within. Its piercing light and fervent
heat must penetrate from without.

Civil and religious freedom are founded upon the individual
and his independence, his worth, his rights, and his equal status
and opportunity. For his planting and development a new land
must be found where, with limitless areas for expansion, the
avenues of progress would have no bars of custom or heredity,

CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW

of social orders or privileged classes. The time had come for
the emancipation of the mind and soul of humanity. The factors
wanting for its fulfillment were the new world and its discoverer.

God always has in training some commanding genius for the
control of great crises in the affairs of nations and peoples.
The number of these leaders is less than the centuries, but their
lives are the history of human progress. Though Caesar and
Charlemagne and Hildebrand and Luther and William the Con-
queror and Oliver Cromwell and all the epoch-makers prepared
Europe for the event, and contributed to the result, the lights
which illumine our firmament to-day are Columbus the discov-
erer, Washington the founder, and Lincoln the savior.

Neither realism nor romance furnishes a more striking and
picturesque figure than that of Christopher Columbus. The mys-
tery about his origin heightens the charm of his story. That he
came from among the toilers of his time is in harmony with the
struggles of our period. Forty-four authentic portraits of him
have descended to us, and no two of them are the counterfeits
of the same person. Each represents a character as distinct as
its canvas. Strength and weakness, intellectuality and stupidity,
high moral purpose and brutal ferocity, purity and licentiousness,
the dreamer and the miser, the pirate and the Puritan, are the
types from which we may select our hero. We dismiss the
painter, and piercing with the clarified vision of the dawn of
the twentieth century the veil of four hundred years, we con-
struct our Columbus.

The perils of the sea in his youth upon the rich argosies of
Genoa, or in the service of the licensed rovers who made them
their prey, had developed a skillful navigator and intrepid mar-
iner. They had given him a glimpse of the possibilities of the
unknown beyond .the highways of travel, which roused an un-
quenchable thirst for adventure and research. The study of the
narratives of previous explorers and diligent questionings of the
daring spirits who had ventured far towards the fabled West
gradually evolved a theory which became in his mind so fixed a
fact that he could inspire others with his own passionate beliefs.
The words, "That is a lie,8 written by him on the margin of
nearly every page of a volume of the travels of Marco Polo,
which is still to be found in a Genoese library, illustrate the
skepticism of his beginning, and the first vision of the New
World the fulfillment of his faith.

CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW

To secure the means to test the truth of his speculations, this
poor and unknown dreamer must win the support of kings and
overcome the hostility of the Church. He never doubted his
ability to do both, though he knew of no man living who was
so great in power, or lineage, or learning, that he could accom-
plish either. Unaided and alone he succeeded in arousing the
jealousies of sovereigns, and dividing the councils of the ecclesi-
astics. w I will command your fleet and discover for you new
realms, but only on condition that you confer on me hereditary
nobility, the Admiralty of the Ocean and the Vice-Royalty and
one-tenth the revenues of the New World," were his haughty
terms to King John of Portugal. After ten years of disappoint-
ment and poverty, subsisting most of the time upon the charity
of the enlightened monk of the Convent of Rabida, who was his
unfaltering friend, he stood before the throne of Ferdinand and
Isabella, and, rising to imperial dignity in his rags, embodied the
same royal conditions in his petition. The capture of Granada,
the expulsion of Islam from Europe, and the triumph of the
Cross, aroused the admiration and devotion of Christendom. But
this proud beggar, holding in his grasp the potential promise
and dominion of El Dorado and Cathay, divided with the Moslem
surrender the attention of sovereigns and of bishops. France
and England indicated a desire to hear his theories and see his
maps while he was still a suppliant at the gates of the camp of
Castile and Aragon, the sport of its courtiers, and the scoff of
its confessors. His unshakable faith that Christopher Columbus
was commissioned from heaven, both by his name and by
Divine command, to carry <( Christ across the sea w to new con-
tinents and pagan peoples lifted him so far above the discour-
agements of an empty purse and a contemptuous court that he
was proof against the rebuffs of fortune or of friends. To con-
quer the prejudices of the clergy, to win the approval and finan-
cial support of the State, to venture upon that unknown ocean,
which, according to the beliefs of the age, was peopled with
demons and savage beasts of frightful shape, and from which
there was no possibility of return, required the zeal of Peter the
Hermit, the chivalric courage of the Cid, and the imagination of
Dante. Columbus belonged to that high order of <( cranks" who
confidently walk where <( angels fear to tread, " and often become
the benefactors of their country or their kind.

1774

CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW

It was a happy omen of the position which woman was to
hold in America that the only person who comprehended the
majestic scope of his plans and the invincible quality of his
genius was the able and gracious Queen of Castile. Isabella
alone of all the dignitaries of that age shares with Columbus the
honors of his great achievement. She arrayed her kingdom and
her private fortune behind the enthusiasm of this mystic mari-
ner, and posterity pays homage to her wisdom and faith.

The overthrow of the Mohammedan power in Spain would
have been a forgotten scene in one of the innumerable acts in
the grand drama of history had not Isabella conferred immor-
tality upon herself, her husband, and their dual crown, by her
recognition of Columbus. The devout spirit of the Queen and
the high purpose of the explorer inspired the voyage, subdued
the mutinous crew, and prevailed over the raging storms. They
covered with the divine radiance of religion and humanity the
degrading search for gold and the horrors of its quest, which
filled the first century of conquest with every form of lust and
greed.

The mighty soul of the great admiral was undaunted by the
ingratitude of princes and the hostility of the people by impris-
onment and neglect. He died as he was securing the means and
preparing a campaign for the rescue of the Holy Sepulchre at
Jerusalem from the infidel. He did not know what time has
revealed, that while the mission of the crusades of Godfrey of
Bouillon and Richard of the Lion Heart was a bloody and fruit-
less romance, the discovery of America was the salvation of the
world. The one was the symbol, the other the spirit; the one
death, the other life. The tomb of the Savior was a narrow
and empty vault, precious only for its memories of the supreme
tragedy of the centuries, but the new continent was to be the
home and temple of the living God.

The rulers of the Old World began with partitioning the
New. To them the discovery was expansion of empire and
grandeur to the throne. Vast territories, whose properties and
possibilities were little understood, and whose extent was greater
than the kingdoms of the sovereigns, were the gifts to court
favorites and the prizes of royal approval. But individual intelli-
gence and independent conscience found here haven and refuge.
They were the passengers upon the caravels of Columbus, and

CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW

he was unconsciously making for the port of civil and religious
liberty. Thinkers who believed men capable of higher destinies
and larger responsibilities, and pious people who preferred the
Bible to that union of Church and State where each serves the
other for the temporal benefit of both, fled to these distant and
hospitable lands from intolerable and hopeless oppression at
home. It required three hundred years for the people thus hap-
pily situated to understand their own powers and resources and
to break bonds which were still reverenced or loved, no matter
how deeply they wounded or how hard they galled.

The nations of Europe were so completely absorbed in dynas-
tic difficulties and devastating wars, with diplomacy and ambi-
tions, that, if they heard of, they did not heed the growing
democratic spirit and intelligence in their American colonies.
To them these provinces were sources of revenue, and they
never dreamed that they were also schools of liberty. That it
exhausted three centuries under the most favorable conditions
for the evolution of freedom on this continent demonstrates
the tremendous strength of custom and heredity when sanctioned
and sanctified by religion. The very chains which fettered be-
came inextricably interwoven with the habits of life, the associa-
tions of childhood, the tenderest ties of the family, and the sacred
offices of the Church from the cradle to the grave. It clearly
proves that if the people of the Old World and their descendants
had not possessed the opportunities afforded by the New for their
emancipation, and mankind had never experienced and learned
the American example, instead of living in the light and glory
of nineteenth-century conditions they would still be struggling
with mediaeval problems.

The northern continent was divided among England, France,
and Spain, and the southern between Spain and Portugal.
France, wanting the capacity for colonization, which still char-
acterizes her, gave up her western possessions and left the Eng-
lish, who have the genius of universal empire, masters of North
America. The development of the experiment in the English
domain makes this day memorable. It is due to the wisdom and
courage, the faith and virtue of the inhabitants of this territory,
that government of the people, for the people, and by the people
was inaugurated and has become a triumphant success. The
Puritan settled in New England and the Cavalier in the South.
They represented the opposites of spiritual and temporal life

1776

CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW

and opinions. The processes of liberty liberalized the one and
elevated the other. Washington and Adams were the new types.
Their union in a common cause gave the world a Republic both
stable and free. It possessed conservatism without bigotry, and
liberty without license. It founded institutions strong enough to
resist revolution, and elastic enough for indefinite expansion to
meet the requirements in government of ever-enlarging areas of
population and the needs of progress and growth. It was nur-
tured by the toleration and patriotism which bound together in a
common cause the Puritans of New England and the Catholics
of Maryland, the Dutch Reformers of New York and the Hugue-
nots of South Carolina, the Quakers and Lutherans of Pennsyl-
vania and the Episcopalians, Methodists, Presbyterians, Baptists,
and religionists of all and of opposite opinions in the other col-
onies.

The Mayflower, with the Pilgrims, and a Dutch ship laden
with African slaves were on the ocean at the same time, the
one sailing for Massachusetts, and the other for Virginia. This
company of saints and first cargo of slaves represented the
forces which were to peril and rescue free government. The
slaver was the product of the commercial spirit of Great Britain,
and the greed of the times to stimulate production in the colo-
nies. The men who wrote in the cabin of the Mayflower the
first charter of freedom, a government of just and equal laws,
were a little band of Protestants against every form of injustice
and tyranny. The leaven of their principles made possible the
Declaration of Independence, liberated the slaves, and founded
the free commonwealths which form the Republic of the United
States.

Platforms of principles, by petition or protest or statement,
have been as frequent as revolts against established authority.
They are a part of the political literature of all nations. The
Declaration of Independence proclaimed at Philadelphia, July
4th, 1776, is the only one of them which arrested the attention
of the world when it was published and has held its undivided
interest ever since. The vocabulary of the equality of man had
been in familiar use by philosophers and statesmen for ages. It
expressed noble sentiments, but their application was limited to
classes or conditions. The masses cared little for them, nor
remembered them long. Jefferson's superb crystallization of the
popular ppinion that (<all men are created equal, that they are

CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW

endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that
among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," had
its force and effect in being the deliberate utterance of the peo-
ple. It swept away in a single sentence kings and nobles, peers
and prelates. It was Magna Charta and the Petition of Rights
planted in the virgin soil of the American wilderness and bear-
ing richer and riper fruit. Under its vitalizing influence upon
the individual, the farmer left his plow in the furrow, the lawyer
his books and briefs, the merchant his shop, and the workman
his bench, to enlist in the patriot army. They were fighting for
themselves and their children. They embodied the idea in their
Constitution in the immortal words with which that great instru-
ment of liberty and order began: —

<( We, the people of the United States, do ordain. w
The scope and limitations of this idea of freedom have neither
been misinterpreted nor misunderstood. The laws of nature in
their application to the rise and recognition of men according
to their mental, moral, spiritual, and physical endowments are
left undisturbed. But the accident of birth gives no rank and
confers no privilege. Equal rights and common opportunity for
all have been the spurs of ambition and the motors of progress.
They have established the common schools and built the public
libraries. A sovereign people have learned and enforced the les-
son of free education. The practice of government is itself a
liberal education. People who make their own laws need no
lawgivers. After a century of successful trial, the system has
passed the period of experiment, and its demonstrated perma-
nency and power are revolutionizing the governments of the
world. It has raised the largest armies of modern times for self-
preservation, and at the successful termination of the war re-
turned the soldiers to the pursuits of peace. It has so adjusted
itself to the pride and patriotism of the defeated that they vie
with the victors in their support of and enthusiasm for the
old flag and our common country. Imported anarchists have
preached their baleful doctrines, but have made no converts.
They have tried to inaugurate a reign of terror under the banner
of the violent seizure and distribution of property only to be de-
feated, imprisoned, and execiited by the law made by the people
and enforced by juries selected from the people, and judges and
prosecuting officers elected by the people. Socialism finds dis-
ciples only among those who were its votaries before they were

I778 CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW

forced to fly from their native land, but it does not take root
upon American soil. The State neither supports nor permits
taxation to maintain the Church. The citizen can worship God
according to his belief and conscience, or he may neither rever-
ence nor recognize the Almighty. And yet religion has flour-
ished, churches abound, the ministry is sustained, and millions of
dollars are contributed annually for the evangelization of the
world. The United States is a Christian country and a living
and practical Christianity is the characteristic of its people.

Benjamin Franklin, philosopher and patriot, amused the
jaded courtiers of Louis XVI. by his talks about liberty, and en-
tertained the scientists of France by bringing lightning from the
clouds. In the reckoning of time, the period from Franklin to
Morse, and from Morse to Edison is but a span, and yet it marks
a material development as marvelous as it has been beneficent.
The world has been brought into contact and sympathy. The
electric current thrills and unifies the people of the globe. Power
and production, highways and transports have been so multiplied
and improved by inventive genius, that within the century of our
independence sixty-four millions of people have happy homes
and improved conditions within our borders. We have accumu-
lated wealth far beyond the visions of the Cathay of Columbus
or the El Dorado of De Soto. But the farmers and freeholders,
the savings banks and shops illustrate its universal distribution.
The majority are its possessors and administrators. In housing
and living, in the elements which make the toiler a self-respecting
and respected citizen, in avenues of hope and ambition for child-
ren, in all that gives broader scope and keener pleasure to exist-
ence, the people of this Republic enjoy advantages far beyond
those of other lands. The unequaled and phenomenal progress
of the country has opened wonderful opportunities for making
fortunes, and stimulated to madness the desire and rush for the
accumulation of money. Material prosperity has not debased
literature nor debauched the press; it has neither paralyzed nor
repressed intellectual activity. American science and letters have
received rank and recognition in the older centres of learning.
The demand for higher education has so taxed the resources of
the ancient universities as to compel the foundation and liberal
endowment of colleges all over the Union. Journals, remarkable
for their ability, independence, and power, find their strength, not
in the patronage of government, or the subsidies of wealth, but

CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW

in the support of a nation of newspaper readers. The humblest
and poorest person has, in periodicals whose price is counted in
pennies, a library larger, fuller, and more varied than was within
the reach of the rich in the time of Columbus.

The sum of human happiness has been infinitely increased
by the millions from the Old World who have improved their
conditions in the New, and the returning tide of lesson and ex-
perience has incalculably enriched the Fatherlands. The divine
right of kings has taken its place with the instruments of me-
diaeval torture among the curiosities of the antiquary. Only the
shadow of kingly authority stands between the government of
themselves, by themselves, and the people of Norway and Swe-
den. The union in one empire of the States of Germany is the
symbol of Teutonic power and the hope of German liberalism.
The petty despotisms of Italy have been merged into a nation-
ality which has centralized its authority in its ancient capitol on
the hills of Rome. France was rudely roused from the sullen
submission of centuries to intolerable tyranny by her soldiers
returning from service in the American revolution. The wild
orgies of the Reign of Terror were the revenges and excesses of
a people who had discovered their power, but were not prepared
for its beneficent use. She fled from herself into the arms of
Napoleon. He, too, was a product of the American experiment.
He played with kings as with toys and educated France for lib-
erty. In the processes of her evolution from darkness to light,
she tried Bourbon and Orleanist and the third Napoleon, and cast
them aside. Now in the fullness of time, and through the train-
ing in the school of hardest experience, the French people have
reared and enjoy a permanent republic. England of the May-
flower and of James II., England of George III. and of Lord
North, has enlarged suffrage and is to-day animated and gov-
erned by the democratic spirit. She has her throne admirably
occupied by one of the wisest of sovereigns and best of women,
but it would not survive one dissolute and unworthy successor.
She has her hereditary peers, but the House of Lords will be
brushed aside the moment it resists the will of the people.

The time has arrived for both a closer union and greater dis-
tance between the Old World and the New. The former indis-
criminate welcome to our prairies and the present invitation to
these palaces of art and industry mark the passing period. Un-
watched and unhealthy immigration can no longer be permitted

1780

CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW

to our shores. We must have a national quarantine against dis-
ease, pauperism, and crime. We do not want candidates for our
hospitals, our poorhouses or our jails. We cannot admit those
who come to undermine our institutions and subvert our laws.
But we will gladly throw wide our gates for, and receive with
open arms, those who by intelligence and virtue, by thrift and
loyalty, are worthy of receiving the equal advantages of the
priceless gift of American citizenship. The spirit and object of
this exhibition are peace and kinship.

Three millions of Germans, who are among the best citizens
of the Republic, send greeting to the Fatherland their pride in
its glorious history, its ripe literature, its traditions and associa-
tions. Irish, equal in number to those who still remain upon
the Emerald Isle, who have illustrated their devotion to their
adopted country on many a battlefield, fighting for the Union
and its perpetuity, have rather intensified than diminished their
love for the land of the shamrock and their sympathy with the
aspirations of their brethren at home. The Italian, the Spaniard,
and the Frenchman, the Norwegian, the Swede, and the Dane,
the English, the Scotch, and the Welsh, are none the less loyal
and devoted Americans because in this congress of their kin the
tendrils of affection draw them closer to the hills and valleys,
the legends and the loves associated with their youth.

Edmund Burke, speaking in the British Parliament with pro-
phetic voice, said: <(A great revolution has happened — a revolution
made, not by chopping and changing of power in any of the exist-
ing states, but by the appearance of a new state, of a new spe-
cies, in a new part of the globe. It has made as great a change
in all the relations and balances and gravitations of power as
the appearance of a new planet would in the system of the solar
world. w Thus was the humiliation of our successful revolt tem-
pered to the motherland by pride in the state created by her
children. If we claim heritage in Bacon, Shakespeare, and Mil-
ton, we also acknowledge that it was for liberties guaranteed
Englishmen by sacred charters our fathers triumphantly fought.
While wisely rejecting throne and caste and privilege and an
Established Church in their newborn state, they adopted the
substance of English liberty and the body of English law. Closer
relations with England than with other lands, and a common lan-
guage rendering easy interchanges of criticisms and epithet,
sometimes irritate and offend, but the heart of republican Amer-

CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW

1781

ica beats with responsive pulsations to the hopes and aspirations
of the people of Great Britain.

The grandeur and beauty of this spectacle are the eloquent
witnesses of peace and progress. The Parthenon and the cathe-
dral exhausted the genius of the ancient, and the skill of the
mediaeval architects, in housing the statue or spirit of Deity. In
their ruins or their antiquity they are mute protests against the
merciless enmity of nations, which forced art to flee to the altar
for protection. The United States welcome the sister republics
of the Southern and Northern continents, and the nations and
peoples of Europe and Asia, of Africa and Australia, with the
products of their lands, of their skill and of their industry, to
this city of yesterday, yet clothed with royal splendor as the
Queen of the Great Lakes. The artists and architects of the
country have been bidden to design and erect the buildings
which shall fitly illustrate the height of our civilization and the
breadth of our hospitality. The peace of the world permits and
protects their efforts in utilizing their powers for man's temporal
welfare. The result is this park of palaces. The originality and
the boldness of their conceptions, and the magnitude and har-
mony of their creations, are the contributions of America to the
oldest of the arts and the cordial bidding of America to the peo-
ples of the earth to come and bring the fruitage of their age to
the boundless opportunities of this unparalleled exhibition.

If interest in the affairs of this world is vouchsafed to those
who have gone before, the spirit of Columbus hovers over us to-
day. Only by celestial intelligence can it grasp the full signifi-
cance of this spectacle and ceremonial.

From the first century to the fifteenth counts for little in the
history of progress, but in the period between the fifteenth and
the twentieth is crowded the romance and reality of human de-
velopment. Life has been prolonged, and its enjoyment inten-
sified. The powers of the air and the water, the resistless forces
of the elements, which in the time of the Discoverer were the
visible terrors of the wrath of God, have been subdued to the
service of man. Art and luxuries which could be possessed and
enjoyed only by the rich and noble, the works of genius which
were read and understood only by the learned few, domestic
comforts and surroundings beyond the reach of lord or bishop,
now adorn and illumine the homes of our citizens. Serfs are
sovereigns and the people are kings. The trophies and splendors

1782

CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW

of their reign are commonwealths, rich in every attribute of
great States, and united in a Republic whose power and pros-
perity and liberty and enlightenment are the wonder and admir-
ation of the world.

All hail, Columbus, discoverer, dreamer, hero, and apostle! We
here, of every race and country, recognize the horizon which
bounded his vision and the infinite scope of his genius. The
voice of gratitude and praise for all the blessings which have
been showered upon mankind by his adventure is limited to no
language, but is uttered in every tongue. Neither marble nor
brass can fitly form his statue. Continents are his monument,
and unnumbered millions present and to come, who enjpy in
their liberties and their happiness the fruits of his faith, will
reverently guard and preserve, from century to century, his name
and fame.

LIBERTY ENLIGHTENING THE WORLD

(Peroration of the Address, Delivered October 28th, 1886, at the Dedication
of the Bartholdi Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor)

AMERICAN liberty has been for a century a beacon light for the
nations. Under its teachings and by the force of its exam-
ple, the Italians have expelled their petty and arbitrary
princelings and united under a parliamentary government; the
gloomy despotism of Spain has been dispelled by the represen-
tatives of the people and a free press; the great German race
has demonstrated its power for empire and its ability to gov-
ern itself. The Austrian monarch, who, when a hundred years
ago Washington pleaded with him across the seas for the re-
lease of Lafayette from the dungeon of Olmutz, replied that
<(he had not the power,* because the safety of his throne and
liis pledges to his royal brethren of Europe compelled him
to keep confined the one man who represented the enfranchise-
ment of the people of every race and country, is to-day, in the
person of his successor, rejoicing with his subjects in the limita-
tions of a Constitution which guarantees liberties, and a Congress
which protects and enlarges them. Magna Charta, won at Run-
nymede for Englishmen, and developing into the principles of
the Declaration of Independence with their descendants, has
returned to the mother country to bear fruit in an open Parlia-

CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW

1783

ment, a free press, the loss of royal prerogative, and the passage
of power from the classes to the masses.

The sentiment is sublime which moves the people of France
and America, the blood of whose fathers, commingling upon the
battlefields of the Revolution, made possible this magnificent
march of liberty and their own Republics, to commemorate the
results of the past and typify the hopes of the future in this
noble work of art. The descendants of Lafayette, Rochambeau,
and De Grasse, who fought for us in our first struggle, and
Laboulaye, Henri Martin, De Lesseps, and other grand and brill-
iant men, whose eloquent voices and powerful sympathies were
with us in our last, conceived the idea, and it has received ma-
jestic form and expression through the genius of Bartholdi.

In all ages the achievements of man and his aspirations have
been represented in symbols. Races have disappeared and no
record remains of their rise or fall, but by their monuments we
know their history. The huge monoliths of the Assyrians and
the obelisks of the Egyptians tell their stories of forgotten civili-
zations, but the sole purpose, of their erection was to glorify
rulers and preserve the boasts of conquerors. They teach sad
lessons of the vanity of ambition, the cruelty of arbitrary power,
and the miseries of mankind. The Olympian Jupiter enthroned
in the Parthenon expressed in ivory and gold the awful majesty
of the Greek idea of the king of the gods; the bronze statue of
Minerva on the Acropolis offered the protection of the patron
goddess of Athens to the mariners who steered their ships by
her helmet and spear; and in the Colossus of Rhodes, famed as
one of the wonders of the world, the Lord of the Sun welcomed
the commerce of the East to the city of his worship. But they
were all dwarfs in size and pigmies in spirit beside this mighty
structure and its inspiring thought. Higher than the monument
in Trafalgar Square, which commemorates the victories of Nelson
on the sea; higher than the Column Vendome, which perpetuates
the triumphs of Napoleon on the land; higher than the towers
of the Brooklyn bridge, which exhibit the latest and grandest
results of science, invention, and industrial progress, this Statue
of Liberty rises toward the heavens to illustrate an idea which
nerved the three hundred at Thermopylae and armed the ten
thousand at Marathon; which drove Tarquin from Rome and
aimed the arrow of Tell; which charged with Cromwell and his
Ironsides and accompanied Sidney to the block; which fired the

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CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW

farmer's gun at Lexington and razed the Bastile in Paris; which
inspired the charter in the cabin of the Mayflower and the
Declaration of Independence from the Continental Congress.

It means that with the abolition of privileges to the few and
the enfranchisement of the individual; with the equality of all
men before the law and universal suffrage; with the ballot secure
from fraud and the voter from intimidation; with the press free
and education furnished by the State for all; with liberty of wor-
ship and free speech; with the right to rise and equal opportunity
for honor and fortune, the problems of labor and capital, of
social regeneration and moral growth, of property and poverty,
will work themselves out under the benign influences of enlight-
ened law-making and law-abiding liberty, without the aid of kings
and armies, or of anarchists and bombs.

Through the Obelisk, so strangely recalling to us of yesterday
the past of twenty centuries, a forgotten monarch says, <( I am
the Great King, the Conqueror, the Chastiser of Nations, w and ex-
cept as a monument of antiquity it conveys no meaning and touches
no chord of human sympathy. But, for unnumbered centuries
to come, as Liberty levels up the people to higher standards and
a broader life, this statue will grow in the admiration and affec-
tions of mankind. When Franklin drew the lightning from the
clouds, he little dreamed that in the evolution of science his dis-
covery would illuminate the torch of Liberty for France and
America. The rays from this beacon, lighting this gateway to
the continent, will welcome the poor and the persecuted with the
hope and promise of homes and citizenship. It will teach them
that there is room and brotherhood for all who will support our
institutions and aid in our development, but that those who
come to disturb our peace and dethrone our laws are aliens and
enemies forever. I devoutly believe that from the unseen and
the unknown two great souls have come to participate in this
celebration. The faith in which they died fulfilled, the cause for
which they battled triumphant, the people they loved in the full
enjoyment of the rights for which they labored and fought and
suffered, the spirit voices of Washington and Lafayette join in
the glad acclaim of France and the United States to Liberty En-
lightening the World.

CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW

THE MILITARY SPIRIT IN AMERICA

1785

(Delivered at the Banquet to Gen. Nelson A. Miles, Given at the Waldorf-
Astoria, New York City, November nth, 1898)

Mr. President and Gentlemen: —

NEW YORK gives cordial greeting to the commanding general
of the American army. New York's welcome is the ap-
plause of the United States. This metropolis is more than
a great city. It surpasses all other cities in the representative
character of its population. The sons of every State in the
Union are living in our midst, while our foreign population is
larger than many of the cities in the lands from which they
came. New York is the second largest city in the world within
its own corporate limits. If we add the population which natur-
ally belongs to it, across the North River, on the shores of New
Jersey, it is the largest city in the world. Within this room are
gathered gentlemen from the North and the South, from the
East and the West, and from the Pacific Slope. So better and
more significantly than would be possible under any other cir-
cumstances, this great Republic honors to-night her foremost
soldier.

So many governors are here, and they have spoken with such
boastfulness of their several commonwealths that my frankness as
a New Yorker compels me to speak plainly. The governor of
Massachusetts in his eloquent address, after claiming for the
Pilgrim State the origin of most of the institutions which make
our country free and great, says, with a deprecating gesture,
w Massachusetts does not claim everything. w He evidently does
not know the tendencies of his own State. The governor of
Ohio having told us that all the men who have been generals, or
would have been if they had had an opportunity, and all the
men who have been Presidents or ought to have been, and all
the greatness in every department of public life, hail from Ohio,
compels me to repeat what I said many years ago at an Ohio
dinner after hearing its orators, that if Shakespeare had written
his famous plays in our time he would have said : w Some men
are born great and some in Ohio."

We meet to-night in honor of a soldier. It has been only
once in a generation that the fame and services of a soldier
have commanded the attention of our people. This is the first

1786

CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW

time since the Civil War, which closed thirty-three years ago,
that the soldier has been sufficiently in evidence to receive dec-
oration and applause. We are fond in our literature and our
oratory of drawing sharp contrasts between the Old World and
the New. We compare the governments of Europe with that of
the United States, and the peoples of Europe with the citizens
of our country. In these comparisons we always find much that
is gratifying to our pride and our patriotism. The difference is
widest in the military conditions and military and naval prepara-
tions of America and Europe. With the exception of Great Brit-
ain, in every European nation every man is a soldier for the first
three years of his majority, and by conscription, while here we
have nothing but voluntary enlistment. The peace establishment
of Europe is 8,000,000 men; that of the United States, with
70,000,000 population, is only 27,000.

A meeting of American sovereigns, where every voter is rec-
ognized as a sovereign, would be a phenomenal gathering. A
few years ago there was a meeting of the crowned heads of Eu-
rope. It was small, select, and brilliant. The sovereigns were
attended by the great officers of their armies and their states-
men, who had also been, or were at the time, soldiers. The Czar
of Russia proposed as the one sentiment of the evening, <(To
Our Order, the Soldier.8 The toast was both accurate and com-
prehensive. Every throne in the Old World has been carved by
the sword. With the exception of Great Britain's, they rest upon
bayonets, while the Chief Magistrate of the United States, is the
choice of 14,000,000 independent citizen voters, and at the end of
four years surrenders his place and power to the people.

When General Grant made his famous tour of the world, he
was received at every court with the most distinguished consid-
eration, not as an ex-President of the United States, but as a
great captain who had commanded larger armies and won more
victories than any other soldier of that period. He became
weary of the continued pomp and ceremony, and when the day
arrived for a presentation to the King of Sweden he escaped
somehow from the American minister, the royal coach, with its
gorgeously appareled horses, its outriders, and its royal guard,
and appeared at the palace in his tourist costume — the costume
of an American tourist at that. He paralyzed the flunkies in
attendance by figuratively ringing the front door bell and send-
ing in his card. The King received him as if he had come in

CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW

1787

royal state. This very sensible sovereign said afterward, * Gen-
eral Grant, as the foremost soldier of his age, is the chief of our
order, and therefore whatever ceremony he prescribes for his
own reception is the right and proper method of according to
him our hospitality. w

I was in London last summer during the Jubilee days of
Queen Victoria. I saw that wonderful and historic pageant,
which illustrated the devotion of her people and the glories of
her marvelous reign. The kings and princes, the generals and
statesmen of the world were in that procession. Brilliant beyond
language were the costumes, the uniforms, and the decorations
which they wore, — all except our own embassador, who, by the
regulations framed during a primitive period of isolation and
provincialism, was compelled to appear in the early morning in
this brilliant throng in a dress suit. If the regulations prescribed
that he should appear as Daniel Webster always did, in a blue
frock coat with brass buttons, and a buff vest, that would be an
American uniform; or if they should prescribe that he appear in
the close-buttoned frock coat, black * pants, w and high standing
collar, which is the traditional uniform of the American orator
on state occasions, that would be American. But the dress suit
in the morning is in touch with no American habit of the club,
the drawing-room, the farm, the ranch, the mine, the business
office, the social function, or the state ceremony. However, the
regulations of the State Department do not apply to the officers
of our army and navy. General Miles, in the full and effective
uniform of the commanding general of the American army, rode
among princes in the procession and sat his horse amid the roy-
alties and marshals and generals of Europe at the review at Al-
dershot. His commanding figure and soldierly presence filled
every American with honest pride both for our little army and
that it had such a distinguished and admirable representative on
this famous occasion. A Russian grand duke whom I knew
came up to me in great excitement and fairly shouted, — though
shouting is very bad form in Europe, — not anything about the
parade or the procession or the significance of the event, but
simply, <( I have seen your American general. M Here to-night,
on this side of the ocean, we also show with our cheers that we
are glad to see our American general.

Our wars have come but once in each generation since the
formation of our Government. The hero of our Revolutionary

1788

CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW

War, which closed in 1783, was General Washington. The grati-
tude of the people made him twice President of the United States,
and he lives with imperishable and growing fame in the affec-
tions of his countrymen. The hero of the next war, which closed
in 1814, was General Jackson, who was also twice President of
the United States and is the titular saint of the Democratic party.
Between 1814 and 1848 the country was at peace. The soldier
was unknown in our civil life. It became fashionable to de-
ride the army and to speak slightingly of the navy as of no
use to a country situated like ours. The humorist, the carica-
turist, and the satirist selected for their subjects training day and
the State militia. The service was dropping into contempt. The
War with Mexico developed instantly the military spirit of the
Republic. The whole country was filled with warlike enthusiasm
and anxiety to participate in the fight. We had two heroes
from that war — General Scott and General Taylor. General
Scott missed the presidency because of his unfortunate letter of
acceptance of the nomination beginning, (< I have just risen from
a hasty plate of soup.® From that line has become crystallized
into a phrase that situation in American public life when a man
has tumbled by his own folly into political defeat or oblivion,
that he has (< fallen into the soup. w General Taylor became Presi-
dent of the United States.

Another generation passed, and we had the Civil War, which
closed in 1865. This contest was a supreme demonstration that
peace does not decrease the military ardor, the vigor, or the
patriotism of the American citizen. It was a battle of Ameri-
cans against Americans, in which a million volunteers lost their
lives. The hero of that war was General Grant, who became
twice President of the United States. Then we had long peace
from 1865 to 1898. The American jingoes, who are perpetually
seeking occasions for war, when no better reason offers, base
their action upon the argument that the virility and manhood of
a people degenerate unless kept alive by conditions which com-
pel them to fight frequently for the honor and the flag of their
country. Some of them have insisted for years that this period
had arrived, that patriotism and self-sacrificing courage were
yielding to gross materialism, and unless we had our war we
would speedily see the decadence of the nation. But no sooner
had war been declared against Spain than a generation which
knew nothing of scars or of the battles the glories or the fury

CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW

1789

of the fighting of the Civil War, rushed to the recruiting offices
to enlist as volunteers in numbers . ten times beyond what was
named in the call for troops. Napoleon said : " Scratch a Russian
and you find a Tartar.* Scratch an American and you find a
fighter. The inheritors of an ancestry which for generations
have never yielded to a foe, have avenged wrongs, have vindi-
cated right, have fought and died for their own liberty, and,
more, have fought and died for the liberty of others, have to-
day, as they will have under the inspiring spirit of liberty for
all time, that dominant spirit which makes their country power-
ful, keeps their institutions pure and permanent and enlarges
their own freedom.

I am delighted with the tribute which our governor-elect,
Colonel Roosevelt, has paid to-night to the regular army. We
never fail to give a full and deserved measure of applause and
recognition to the volunteer soldiers. We have not sufficiently
recognized the superb service and fidelity of our regular army.
During the civil strife it was this small and invincible army
which prevented the Government from being overthrown until
the volunteers had been drilled into soldiers. They held aloft
the standard which never fell, never retreated, and around which
rallied the raw troops. At the close of the Civil War this army,
which was always at the front, had dwindled by losses in battle
to scarcely a regiment. At frontier posts, at forts on the coast,
and in encampments, the regular army is always drilling and
working. It becomes and remains the most complete fighting
machine in the world. The intelligence of its soldiers puts the
man behind the gun, who in all emergencies, where commands
fail because commanders are shot, can take the initiative and
hold the field or rush the battery. We must give more care and
more skilled attention to this great arm of our service and raise
it to the standard required by the conditions of our country and
the numbers of our population. I do not mean a great standing
army, but I do mean one which will be universally recognized by
our people as a reasonable and respectable size and efficiency.

A singular illustration of the importance of the navy in the
new conditions forced upon us by the victories it has won and
its conquests in the Western Hemisphere and the Pacific Ocean
is furnished by comparing the consideration it received in former
wars and its present prominence. While Washington lives for-
ever as the hero of the first war, Paul Jones is seldom men-

I790 CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW

tioned; while General Jackson lives as the hero of our second
war, we hear little of Decatur and Perry and the other great
naval commanders; while Grant lives as the embodiment of our
Civil War, we hear little of Farragut, Porter, or Paulding, but
the historian of this war is likely to put the navy ahead of the
army, and in the popular imagination of the future which will
crystallize the war in its heroes, Dewey will stand beside Miles.
The fame of Miles will live because of his brilliant record in the
Civil War and campaigns against the Indians, and because the
military successes which we had in the war with Spain were
largely due to his plan of campaign and his broad and compre-
hensive strategy.

ENGLAND AND AMERICA SINCE THE SPANISH WAR

(Delivered at the Lotos Club Banquet to Lord Herschel, New York, Novem-
ber 5th, 1898)

Gentlemen : —

WHEN an American has enjoyed the cordial hospitality of an
English home, he is ever after craving an opportunity to
reciprocate in his own country. He discovers that the
traditional icy reserve and insular indifference with which the
Englishman is popularly credited are only the shield and armor
which protect the inhabitants of the centre and capital of the
activities of the Old World from the frauds and fools of the whole
world. When once thawed out, our kin across the sea can be as
demonstrative and, in their own way, as jocose as the untamed
natives of these Western wilds. An eminent medical authority, in
a learned essay on heredity and longevity, advanced this theory:
That the emigrant from the British Isles to our shores, under
the influence of our dry and exciting atmosphere, becomes, in a
few generations, abnormally nervous, thin, and dyspeptic. Be-
tween forty and fifty he can arrest the speed with which he is
hurrying to an untimely grave, if he will move over to England.
The climate there will work upon his ancestral tendencies, and
he will develop backward to the original type. Instead of his
restless spirit reading the epitaph upon his tombstone in the
United States, he will be enjoying life in the old country in the
seventies and eighties, be taking his daily gospel from the Times,
and, on gouty days, lamenting modern degeneracy. The con-

CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW ,79,

verse must be equally true, and the Englishman who has passed
his climacteric and is afflicted with inertia and adipose, will find
in the sunshine and champagne air of America the return of the
energy and athletic possibilities of his youth. Thus the two
countries, in the exchange, will exhibit a type which, once safely
past the allotted line of life, in their new environment, will
keep going on forever. None of us want to quit this earthly
scene so long as we can retain health and mind. The attrac-
tions of the heavenly city are beyond description, but residence
there runs through such countless ages that a decade, more or
less, before climbing the golden stairs, is a loss of rich experi-
ence this side, and not noticed on the other.

It is a singular fact that the United States has known Eng-
land for nearly three hundred years, and England has known
little about the United States until within the past ten years.
Eight years ago Mr. Gladstone asked me about the newspapers
in this country. I told him that the press in nearly all of our
large cities had from a half to a whole column of European
cables daily, and three columns on Sunday, and two-thirds of it
was about English affairs. He expressed surprise and pleasure,
and great regret that the English press was not equally full of
American news. From ten to fifty lines on our markets was
all the information British readers had about our interests, un-
less a lynching, a railroad smash-up, or a big corporation sud-
denly gone bankrupt commanded all the space required and gave
a lively picture of our settled habits. English statesmen of all
parties have been as well known and understood by our people
for a quarter of a century as those of our own country, while
beyond Lincoln, Grant, and Garfield, the British public never
heard of our party leaders and public men. Such is the power
and educational value of the press.

With the advent of Smalley, Norman, and others, sending full
dispatches from the United States to the English newspapers, our
press relations have become reciprocal. The American in Eng-
land is as much in touch each morning with the happenings at
home as the Englishman is in America with the affairs of Eu-
rope. This daily interchange of information as to the conditions,
the situation, the opinions, and the mutual interests of the two
countries has been of incalculable benefit in bringing about a
better acquaintance and more cordial sentiments between these
two great English-speaking nations. The better we know each

1792

CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW

other, the riper grows our friendship. The publication of Bryce's
American Commonwealth* was the dawn of a clearer under-
standing and closer relations. In my schooldays the boys of the
village still ptayed <( Fee, fi, fow, fum, I smell the blood of an
Englishman; dead or alive I will have some."

An East Tennessee Union farmer, coming into Knoxville in
the early days of the Civil War, heard of Mason and Slidell, the
Confederate commissioners, who were passengers for Europe on
an English merchant vessel, having been taken off by force by
an American cruiser and brought back prisoners to this country,
and that Great Britain had demanded their release. "What?8
he said in great astonishment, (< Is that blasted old English ma-
chine going yet? w Now, and especially since the practical
friendship shown to us by England during our war with Spain,
the villagers cheer the entente cordiale between the two coun-
tries, and the Tennessee mountaineers and the Rugby colonists
join in celebrating the Queen's birthday and the Fourth of July.

We have been for a hundred years evoluting toward the mutual
understanding of each other and the intelligent friendship which
existed between the greatest of Americans, George Washington,
and a great Englishman, Lord Shelburne. Shelburne, beyond all
of his countrymen, appreciated the American conditions and posi-
tion in the Revolutionary War, and was the first of foreigners to
form that estimate of Washington, as the foremost man of the
world, which is now universally accepted. It was for him that
Washington sat for a full-length portrait, which now holds the
place of honor in the house of another great and brilliant Eng-
lish statesman and warm friend of the United States, Lord Rose-
bery. On Washington's initiative, and Shelburne 's co-operation,
the two countries made their famous Jay Treaty of 1796.

The Government of the United States is, and always has
been, a lawyers' government. All but three of our Presidents
were lawyers, and four-fifths of our Cabinet Ministers, and a
large majority of both houses of Congress, have always been
members of the bar. The embassador who framed and negoti-
ated this treaty was that eminent jurist, John Jay, the first Chief-
Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. In this
treaty, for the first time, I think, among nations, appeared the
principle of the settlement by arbitration of disputes between
nations. Such was the temper of the period, however, one hun-
dred years ago, and such the jealous and hostile feelings between

CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW

America and England, that it required a long time, with all the
influence of Washington, to have the treaty ratified by the Sen-
ate. Jay was burned in effigy by indignant mobs all over our
country, and Lord Granville, the British Foreign Minister, was
denounced by the opposition — England — as having been duped
by Chief-Justice Jay, and the charge was one of the causes which
led to the overthrow of the ministry of which he was a member.
While that treaty has received little public notice, yet under it
many cases which might have led to serious irritation have been
settled, and notably, and most significant of all, the Geneva arbi-
tration of the Alabama claims under the presidency, and with
the cordial support of the greatest soldier of our Republic, Gen-
eral Grant. The Bench and the Bar of the United States have
always approved and supported the principle of the Jay Treaty.

The common law and the interchangeable decisions of the
courts of the United States and Great Britain have been a con-
tinuing and refreshing bond of union between the lawyers of the
two countries. It was my privilege, in the midst of the Vene-
zuelan excitement, to deliver the annual address before the State
Bar Association of the State of New York. The subject I chose
was international Arbitration,* and as a result of the discussion,
this powerful body, with the calmness and judicious candor char-
acteristic of the profession, unanimously adopted a memorial in
favor of settling all disputes between Great Britain and the United
States by arbitration and in favor of the establishment of an in-
ternational court of dignity and power. This action received sub-
stantially the unanimous approval of the Bench and the Bar of
the United States, and was met with equal warmth by our kin
across the sea.

One of the best signs of our times, tending more to peace,
humanity, and civilization than even the famous proclamation of
the Russian Czar, has been, and is, the warm and increasing
friendship between the great electorate — the democracy of Great
Britain and the people of the United States. Sir Henry Irving
told me, last summer, a story full of significance. It demonstrated
that when the people of Great Britain and the people of the
United States understood one another, they are, in many respects,
one people. One of the most brilliant and eloquent platform
orators the world has ever known was Henry Ward Beecher.
During the time of our Civil War, when the press and the upper
classes of Great Britain were largely hostile to us, Beecher went
v — 113

CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW

abroad as a popular embassador from the people of the United
States to the people of England. Irving said that when Beecher
spoke at Manchester, the feeling among the operatives and arti-
sans of that great manufacturing town was that if the North suc-
ceeded, the rebellion was put down, and the Union was preserved,
in some way the cotton of the Southern States would be diverted,
and their employment gone.

We are not unfamiliar with that sort of politics by misrepre-
sentation in the United States. Irving said that at that time he
was a young actor in a stock company in Manchester. Having
secured a good position in the hall, he saw a maddened mob
struggling to get hold of a handsome young man upon the plat-
form, with the evident purpose of tearing him to pieces. The
young man, Mr. Beecher, was protected by the leading citizens
of Manchester and the police. It was half an hour before
the crowd would listen to a word. The first five minutes of
Beecher's speech set them wild again, and then Irving thought
that Beecher would certainly be dragged from the platform and
killed. By the exertions, however, of the gentlemen about the
orator, a hearing was finally secured, and Beecher developed in
his own masterly way the common language, the literature, and
the ties of the two countries, the common origin of their liberty,
and the common freedom of their people, the interest which
every man had for himself and his children in the perpetuity
and strength of free government in the American Republic.
The first half-hour was silence, the second half-hour was tumult-
uous applause, the next hour was unanimous and enthusiastic
approval, and at the close the crowd insisted upon bearing upon
their shoulders and carrying in triumph to his lodgings the ora-
tor, whose cause they then understood.

The men of letters who write and speak in the English
tongue have always been mutually appreciative, and always
friends. It began with the father of American literature, Wash-
ington Irving, who was held by the British critic as a second
Addison. Longfellow and Hawthorne of a recent period, and
Mark Twain of to-day, find appreciation and applause, — find equal
recognition and pride on both sides of the Atlantic.

It was not until we became involved in a war with a Euro-
pean power that Americans appreciated the extent and depth of
this feeling of kinship among the English-speaking peoples across
the Atlantic. A famous Scotch divine told me that when on the

CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW , — -

one hand Emperor William had sent his telegram encouraging
Kruger in South Africa to fight England, and on the other the
Venezuelan message of President Cleveland was interpreted on
the part of the United States as a challenge for a fight, he
preached a sermon to a Scotch congregation. There are no other
people so devoted and undemonstrative in the world inside the
church as the Scotch Presbyterians. "But," said the preacher,
" when I said that under no conditions would the people of Great
Britain fight their kin in the United States, and that if there
was to be fighting it must all be from the Americans, there was
wild applause, but when I said that if the German Emperor
moved one step further in the hostile action indicated by his tel-
egram, the British fleet would sweep his vessels from the oceans,
and British arms would capture all his colonies inside of sixty
days, the congregation rose and gave cheers."

The war with Spain threatened the equilibrium of that deli-
cate instrument known as the European balance of power, an in-
strument so delicate that it requires eight millions of soldiers and
the waters of the globe covered with navies, to keep it from get-
ting out of trim. Every consideration of the associations of am-
bitions in the East impelled the continental powers to sympathize
with Spain. They proposed that all Europe should intervene, as
was done in the Turko-Grecian War. Great Britain said: "No;
we will take no part in any international action which is hostile
to the United States." It was then proposed by the continental
powers that they should intervene and Great Britain remain neu-
tral. The reply of Great Britain was : « In that case England
will be on the side of the United States." That ended the sub-
ject of interference in our Spanish War. That action promoted
the peace of the world. That sentiment, flashed across the ocean,
electrified the American people. That position, unanimously ap-
proved in Great Britain by the masses and by the classes, re-
ceived such a recognition in the United States as only a great
and generous people can give for a great and generous friend-
ship. That action sent the current of the blood of English-
speaking people flowing in like channels, and was the beginning
of the era of good fellowship which is to have the most marked
influence upon the story of nations and of peoples in the future
history of the world.

Our guest, Lord Herschel, typifies that career common to all
Americans, and which Americans delight to honor. He is the

1796

CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW

architect of his own career, and by the greatest qualities of brain
and character has successfully climbed to the highest office by
which his country can honor and decorate a lawyer. The mis-
sion which brings him to this side is worthy of his great re-
quirements and his broad and catholic judgment. With the
irritations and vexations which naturally arise between Canada
and ourselves permanently removed, there is no spot on earth
where the United States and Great Britain can seriously clash.
With our possessions stretching at intervals of two thousand
miles for harbors and coaling stations, for six thousand miles
across the Pacific, we face the doors of the various gateways of
the Orient, closed by the great powers of the world, except
Great Britain, and we hail the open door which she offers for
the entrance into China and the East for the products of our
farms and our factories.

But yesterday there were four great powers governing the
world, dividing territories of barbarous or semi-civilized peoples,
and ruling the destinies of mankind. They were Great Britain,
France, Germany, and Russia. To-day there are five. The last
has come into this concert of nations by the unprecedented suc-
cesses and marvelous victories of its hundred days of war. Two
of the five, the United States and Great Britain, with the ties
of common language and common law and like liberties, will
work together naturally in this international development. They
will not be, and they cannot be, bound or limited by a hard and
fast alliance, offensive and defensive, like that which marks the
Dreibund or the unknown relations between Russia and France.
But there are relations, there are ties which are stronger than
parchment treaties based upon selfishness, greed, or fear. They
are the ties of blood, of language, and of common aims for the
loftiest purposes for which peoples work and governments exist.

POETRY AND POLITICS IN BRITAIN
(Delivered in Chickering Hall, March i4th, 1885, after a Visit to England)

IN THE early morning we leave behind the great town, and in a
few hours are sailing over Loch Lomond, the queen of the
Scottish lakes. The vast expanse of water, the beautiful
islands, the mountains rising peak on peak till lost in the clouds,
the beetling crags which meet the waves make this one of the

CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW

few sights which fulfill expectations. Through the passes sur-
rounding this lake, the Highland chieftains and their clans raided
the Lowland farms. The Celtic warriors of the olden time fol-
lowed the golden rule of the day: —

tt The good old rule, the simple plan,
That they do take who have the power,
And they do keep "who can. w

The McGregors, the McFarlanes, the Colquhouns, here had
their lairs, and fought those bloody battles which have given to
literature some of its best poetry and romance. It was over
these mountains that the fire signals flashed from peak to peak,
calling the clansman to resist the invader, and it was through
these glens that Roderick Dhu sent his fiery cross, while bold
Rob Roy McGregor defied here his enemies, and far up above
the beach you see the cave which was his shelter and retreat.
But with all that nature has done for Scotland, and she has been
very lavish, the country owes the magic charm with which her
hills and vales are invested for all the world to the genius of
three men — Sir Walter Scott, Robert Burns, and John Knox.

I never shall forget the feelings of reverence and gratification
with which I entered Abbotsford. It is a great, irregular house
on the banks of the Tweed, designed by Sir Walter Scott to
meet his passion for the age of chivalry. It is filled with objects
suggestive of themes upon which he loved to write. In the
armory are suspended from the walls the suits of mail, the lances
and claymores which had belonged to many gallant knights and
border chiefs, and in battle, in foray, and in the tournament had
done bloody and glorious work. In the library were the twenty
thousand volumes he knew so well, and upon the walls, among
famous pictures, one of Queen Mary's severed head. Kings and
queens and heroes had paid homage to his genius, and here are
gifts from Napoleon, George IV., the Duke of Wellington, Ad-
miral Nelson, and the Pope! Those he prized most were relics
of Queen Mary, the dagger and pouch of Rob Roy, the sword of
Bruce, the brooch of Flora McDonald, and the chair of Wallace.
But it is when you enter his study that you seem to be com-
muning with him in the flesh. Everything is undisturbed and
ready for his return. His desk, his pen and inkstand, all the
paraphernalia of his work, are there just as when they were the

i798

CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW

instruments of his wonderful creations. The attendant takes his
coat and hat from the closet, and brings out his cane, and you al-
most gasp for breath, so realistic is the impression, that as you
have pictured him, so he will come in, to resent this intrusion
on his privacy.

[From Scotland, Mr. Depew passed into England, and told his audience of
the condition of the people, of the architectural wonders of the English cathe-
drals, and something of English politics. The following is his description of
a debate he witnessed in the House of Commons:] —

When the debate opened, both sides were present in force.
Facing each other, sat those fierce enemies and rising leaders of
their respective parties — Mr. Chamberlain and Lord Randolph
Churchill. Both are seeking to ride into power as the friends of
the working man, and their success enforces Puck's apothegm:
<( What fools we mortals be ! w Lord Randolph Churchill is the
son of the Duke of Marlborough, and loyal to his class. His au-
dacity is unbounded, and he is a veritable little gamecock of the
House. But he is not and never will be a statesman. Mr.
Chamberlain is a humbug and a demagogue, and in dress so
much of a dandy as to be almost a dude over here. Even Mr.
Justus Schwab would not follow him. He possesses immense
wealth acquired as a manufacturer, and by drying up and driving
out small dealers and reducing the wages of his workmen to the
last penny they will bear; and then he seeks the workingmen's
votes by proposing to confiscate the land. Bah, brother! Take
the beam out of your o\*n eye first.

Sir Stafford Northcote started the ball by an indictment of
the Government. Though usually the dullest of speakers, this
time he was so strong, direct, and incisive, that he made it ex-
ceedingly lively. Of course, he skipped over all the merits like
a lawyer presenting his side, and bunched in most glaring colors
the defects. Mr. Gladstone rose to reply, and we all felt that
he knew the occasion demanded all his powers. In facility of
speech, depth and breadth of information, and powers of presen-
tation, I do not believe he has an equal in the world. He knew
that the French had outgeneraled him in the East; Bismarck
had stolen a march on him in Australia and Africa; his Egyp-
tian policy had ended in a fiasco; Gordon was shut up in Khar-
toum, and commerce and trade were in dreadful straits. His
efforts were to avoid meeting these issues and create false ones,

CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW

'799

and he did it magnificently. He attacked members of the oppo-
sition fiercely and personally; he charged into every opening
they offered. He was pathetic, eloquent, argumentative, and sar-
castic. The Conservative leaders tried their best to prevent the
younger men from being tempted by him into side discussions,
and to confine him to a defense of his mistakes. But they
failed, and the debate closed in a grand burst of oratory from
the Premier, who had never touched a dangerous topic.

i8oo

DERBY, EDWARD G. F. STANLEY, EARL OF

(1799-1869)

IHE politics of the United States, during the whole of the
nineteenth century, were deeply affected by the movement
begun by Wilberforce in England for the manumission of
British slaves. The movement originated in Revolutionary America,
gathered fresh impetus from the speeches of French orators during
the Revolution, and was urged on by the Liberals in the English par-
liament, not only as a humanitarian, but as a political measure. The
English Conservatives could not maintain opposition to it, but they
did secure gradual and compensated emancipation. It was for this
that Edward Geoffrey Smith-Stanley, afterwards Earl of Derby, spoke
in the House of Commons, May i4th, 1833.

He was born at Knowsley, Lancashire, March 29th, 1799. Enter-
ing Parliament in 1820, he became Chief Secretary for Ireland in
1830, and Colonial Secretary in 1833. In 1844, he became Baron
Stanley, and in 1851 he succeeded to the Earldom of Derby. He was
Premier of England in 1852, 1858-59, and 1866-68. His translation of
the 'Iliad* is well known. He died October 23d, 1869.

THE EMANCIPATION OF BRITISH NEGROES

(From a Speech on Gradual Emancipation in the West Indies, Delivered in
the House of Commons, May i8th, 1833)

A SLAVE proprietor, who was examined before the committee
last year (I forget his name), told us that if a slave only
looked his master in the face, he might order him to re-
ceive thirty-nine lashes. Is this the way to teach him to respect
law, and prepare him for the immunities of a free man ? Is it
thus he is to be raised to a level with other men ?

In 1826, Mr. Canning, talking of the dignity of man, quoted

the lines: —

^calumque tueri

Jussit, et erectos ad sidera toller e vultus.^

But how can you tell the negro that he shall look up as a free
man — how can you talk of hopes, encouragement, preparation for

THE EARL OF DERBY.

Photogravure after the Design by W. Roffe from the Statue by Matthew

Noble.

*

DERBY, EDWARD G. F. STANLEY, EARL OP

individual freedom, and general emancipation, when even at this
moment the slave dares not to raise his eyes to his master's face
without the risk of receiving thirty-nine lashes ? I do not speak
of the actual exercise of any such power, — I do not believe it
could be exercised, — but that such a power exists there can be
no doubt. In case of unjust infliction the slave must go before
two magistrates, themselves slave masters; and if he can per-
suade them to believe him, the master is to be prosecuted, and if
found guilty by a jury, subjected to fine and imprisonment; but
if the magistrates think the evidence insufficient, without any
malicious motive on the part of the slave, he is to be subjected to
a second flogging for having made the complaint. This is the
practical working in Jamaica of the law in favor of the slave.
But there is a further punishment: — in case aggravated, over-
whelming cruelty be proved against a master, if a jury find that
it has been atrocious, then an addition is to be made to the fine
and imprisonment ; and what is it ? That the slave may be sold
and the money handed over to the criminal master. This is the
punishment inflicted on masters in Jamaica for conduct which is
called atrocious. . . .

I am afraid I may disgust the House by details of the pun-
ishments inflicted; but they are a part of the system, and I must
refer to them. I find that in 1829, when the slave population
was 61,627, the number of punishments returned to the protect-
ors was no less than 17,359; in the next year, when the popula-
tion was 59,547, the punishments were increased to 18,324, — the
number of lashes in that time amounting to 194,744. In the
year 1831, the population being then only 58,000, the number of
punishments were 21,656, the lashes being 199,500.

This was the official record of the punishments supplied to
the protectors of slaves by the owners themselves; it did not in-
clude any punishments inflicted under judicial authority; not one
of those inflicted by direction of a magistrate; but those domes-
tic punishments alone, which, in the present state of the law, are
sanctioned; and this return also, let it be recollected, is confined
to the Crown colonies, and represents the domestic, irresponsible
punishments which the owners of slaves have inflicted by their
own authority. I will not impute any guilt to the owners of
the slaves — I will not impute to them anything more than that
perversion of moral feeling which it is one of the greatest curses
of slavery, that it entails and impresses upon the mind of the

1802 DERBY, EDWARD G. F. STANLEY, EARL OF

enslaver — I will not impute any want of the ordinary feelings
of humanity, further than that they are perverted by prejudice
and rendered callous by custom and habit — but I call upon the
House to consider where punishments are unrecorded, where no
check is interposed by the legal authority, where no remedy or
no efficient remedy is given to the slave by authority of the law
— to consider if, in this comparatively free state of Demerara,
this be the amount of punishment inflicted in one year, what
must be the nature of the system which is carried on in other
colonies where there are no checks ? What must be the degra-
dation of the system under which the other colonies of the
British Empire at this moment labor ? What is the amount of
unredressed injustice, — what is the amount of fatal oppression
and cruel tyranny which calls upon this House to regulate, by
interposing its solemn authority between this dreadful system of
oppression and that which Mr. Canning called (<the abstract love
of the cart- whip * ! .

There is also another object on which I am sure his Maj-
esty's government will not appeal in vain to the House or to the
country. I feel perfect confidence in calling upon this House to
pledge itself, whether in aid of the local legislatures of the colo-
nies, or without any aid from those legislatures, to establish a
religious and moral system of education for the negroes. We
are about to emancipate the slaves; the old, after a trial of their
industrious and other good qualities — the young immediately.
With the young, therefore, our responsibility will immediately
commence. If we place them in a state of freedom, we are
bound to see that they are fitted for the enjoyment of that state;
we are bound to give them the means of proving to themselves
that the world is not for merely animal existence, that it is not
the lot of man merely to labor incessantly from the cradle to the
grave, and that to die is not merely to get to the end of a
wearisome pilgrimage. We must endeavor to give them habits
and to imbue them with feelings calculated to qualify them for
the adequate discharge of their duties here; and we must en-
deavor to instil into them the conviction that when those duties
shall be discharged they are not <( as the brutes that perish. w

Sir, I have now gone through the various points to which I
think it necessary to call the attention of the House. I know
the difficulties, the almost insurmountable obstacles, which attend
almost any plan with reference to this subject; and I know the

DERBY, EDWARD G. F. STANLEY, EARL OP 1803

peculiar disadvantages under which I bring forward the present
plan. But I entertain a confident hope that the resolutions
which I shall have the honor to submit to the House contain a
germ, which, in the process of time, will be matured, by better
judgment and knowledge, into a perfect fruit; and that from the
day on which the act passes there will be secured to the coun-
try, to the colonies, and to all classes of his Majesty's subjects,
the benefit of a virtual extinction of all the horrors attendant on
a state of slavery; and that, at no very distant period, by no un-
certain operation, but by the effect of that machinery which the
proposed plan will put in motion, the dark stain which disfig-
ures the fair freedom of this country will be wholly wiped out.
Sir, in looking to this most desirable object, it is impossible
not to advert to those who first broached the mighty question of
the extinction of slavery, the earliest laborers in that cause, the
final triumph of which they were not destined to see. They
struggled for the establishment of first principles — they were sat-
isfied with laying the foundation of that edifice which they left
it to their successors to rear; they saw the future, as the proph-
ets of old saw (< the days that were to come, " but they saw it
afar off, and with the eye of faith. It is not without the deepest
emotion, I recollect, that there is yet living one of the earliest,
one of the most religious, one of the most conscientious, one of
the most eloquent, one of the most zealous friends of this great
cause, who watched it in its dawn. Wilberforce still remains to
see, I trust, the final consummation of the great and glorious
work which he was one of the first to commence, and to ex-
claim, like the last of the prophets to whom I have already
alluded: "Lord, now let thy servant depart in peace.®

Sir, it is with great regret that I have felt it necessary to
detain the House so long; but on a subject of so much difficulty
it was imperative upon me to do so. I will now, however, after
thanking the House for the patience and attention with which
they have been so good as to listen to me, conclude with offer-
ing up an ardent prayer that by the course which they may
adopt they will for a second time set the world a glorious exam-
ple of a commercial nation, weighing commercial advantages
light in the balance against justice and religion; that they will
achieve the great object of extinguishing slavery, gradually,
safely, but at the same time completely, — a result the more to be
desired, if accomplished by a yielding on one side and the othert

1804 DERBY, EDWARD G. F. STANLEY, EARL OF

which may make both sides forget extreme opinion, and which
will exhibit a great and proud example of a deliberative assem-
bly, reconciling conflicting interests, liberating the slave without
inflicting hardship on his master, gratifying the liberal and hu-
mane spirit of the age, without harming even those who stand
in its way, and vindicating their high functions moderately, but
with determination, and in a manner honorable to the people
of whom they are the representatives, and acting in a manner
on this important question which will afford a sure pledge of a
successful termination of the glorious career on which they are
about to enter.

1805

SIR EDWARD DERING

(1598-1644)

'IR EDWARD DERING was Member from Kent and Chairman
of the Committee on Religion in the Long Parliament. A
graduate of Cambridge and a man of scholarly tastes, he
was inclined to sympathize strongly with the people in their griev-
ances against abuses in Church and State, but when he attempted to
hold a middle course between the Puritans and the extreme advo-
cates of a political episcopacy, he failed so signally that the Puritan
element impeached him for treason. His speeches in favor of a
modified episcopacy and an educated clergy separated him from the
popular party and forced him to side with the King for whom he
fought after he escaped the process of Parliament. He was born in
the Tower of London, January 28th, 1598, his father being at that
time deputy-lieutenant of the Tower. He died June 22d, 1644.
Among the various works left by him were a volume of his speeches
prepared and published by himself. It was this volume which ex-
cited the anger of the Puritans against him. It was burned by order
of the House of Commons, and he was sent to the Tower because
of it.

FOR THE ENCOURAGEMENT OF LEARNING

(Delivered in the English Parliament, November 22d, 1841, Against Passing

the Remonstrance)

Mr, Speaker : —

THIS has been a very accusative age; yet have I not heard any
superstition, much less idolatry, charged, much less proved,
upon the several Bishops of London, Winchester, Chester,
Carlisle, Chichester.

Parcite paucorum crimen diffundere in omnes. Not for love
unto the persons of the Bishops, but for honor to our religion,
although the times of late have been somewhat darkened, yet
let us not make the day blacker in report than it is in truth.

In the last place I observe a promise in general words: That
learning shall be rather advanced than discouraged: Sed quid
verbe audio, cum facta videam.

SIR EDWARD DERING

Great rewards do beget great endeavors; and certainly when
the great basin and ewer are taken out of the lottery, you shall
have few adventures for small plate and spoons only.

If any man could cut the moon out all into little stars,
although we might still have the same moon, or as much in
small pieces, yet we shall want both light and influence.

To hold out the golden ball of honor and of profit is both
policy and honesty, and will be operative upon the best natures
and the most pious minds.

But, Mr. Speaker, if I observe aright, learning (I mean re-
ligious learning) in this remonstrance is for one-half thereof
utterly unthought on. And because I hear often speech of one-
half, but seldom mention of the other, give me leave, I beseech
you, in this theme a little to enlarge myself; if your remonstrance
once pass, it will too late, I fear, to enter this plea.

It is, I dare say, the unanimous wish, the concurrent sense of
this whole House to go such a way as may best settle and secure
an able, learned, and fully sufficient ministry among us. This
ability, this sufficiency, must be of two several sorts.

It is one thing to be able to preach and to fill the pulpit
well; it is another ability to confute the perverse adversaries of
truth, and to stand in that breach. The first of these gives you
the wholesome food of sound doctrine; the other maintains it for
you, and defends it from such harpies as would devour or else
pollute it. Both of these are supremely necessary for us and for
our religion.

Both are of divine institution. The holy Apostle requireth
both. Both to call and to convince. First to preach, that he be
able with sound doctrine to exhort; and then to convince the
gainsayers. For, saith he, there are many deceivers whose mouths
must be stopped.

Now, sir, to my purpose; these double abilities, these several
sufficiencies, may perhaps sometime meet together in one and
the same man, but seldom, very seldom, so seldom that you
scarce can find a very few among thousands rightly qualified in
both.

Nor is this so much infelicity of our time, or any times, as it
is generally the incapacity of man, who cannot easily raise him-
self up to double excellencies.

Knowledge in religion doth extend itself into so large, so vast
a sphere, that many do out-cross the diameter, and find weight

SIR EDWARD DERING

1807

enough in half their work; very few do or can travel the whole
circle round.

Some one in an age, perhaps, may be found, who, as Sir Fran-
cis Drake about the terrestrial globe, may have traveled the
celestial orb of theological learning, both for controversial and in-
structive divinity.

The incomparable primate of Ireland deserves first to be
named. Bishop Morton, whom I mentioned before, is another
reverend worthy and hath highly deserved of our Church in both
capacities. Jewel, of pious memory, is another Bishop never to
be forgotten. Some few others I could name, able and active
both for pulpit and the pen. But, sir, these be rarce aves, and
there are very few of them.

The reason is evident. For whilst one man doth chiefly in-
tend the pulpit exercises, he is thereby disabled for polemic dis-
courses; and whilst another indulgeth to himself the faculty of
his pen, he thereby renders himself the weaker for the pulpit.
Some men aiming at eminency in both have proved but mean
proficients in either. For it is a rule and a sure one: —

Pluribus intentus minor est ad singula.

Now, sir, such a way, such a temper, of Church government
and of Church revenue, I must wish, as may best secure unto
us both; both for preaching to us at home, and for convincing
such as are abroad.

Let me be always sure of some champions in our Israel, such
as may be ready and able to fight the Lord's battle against the
Philistines of Rome, the Socinians of the North, the Arminians
and Semi- Pelagians of the West, and generally against heretics
and atheists everywhere. God increase the number of his labor-
ers within his vineyard, such as may plentifully and powerfully
preach faith and good life among us. But never let us want
some of these watchmen also about our Israel, such as may from
the Everlasting Hills (so the Scriptures are called) watch for us,
aud destroy the common enemy, which way soever he shall
approach. Let us maintain both pen and pulpit. Let no Am-
monite persuade the Gileadite to fool out his right eye, unless
we be willing to make a league with destruction and co wink at
ruin, whilst it comes upon us.

Learning, sir, it is invaluable; the loss of learning, it is not
in one age recoverable. You may have observed that there

SIR EDWARD DERING

hath been a continual spring, a perpetual growth of learning,
ever since it pleased God first to light Luther's candle; I might
have said Wickliff's, and justly so I do, for even from that time
unto this day and night and hour, this light hath increased; and
all this while our better cause hath gained by this light, which
doth convince our Miso-musists and doth evict that learning and
religion, by their mutual support, are like hypocrite twins, — they
laugh and mourn together.

But, sir, notwithstanding all this so long increase of learning,
there is terra incognita, a great land of learning not yet discov-
ered; our adversaries are daily trading, and we must not sit
down and give over, but must encourage and maintain and in-
crease the number of our painful adventurers for the Golden
Fleece; and except the fleece be of gold, you shall have no
adventurers.

RELIGIOUS CONTROVERSY IN PARLIAMENT
(From a Speech on the State of the Kingdom, November 2oth, 1641)
Mr. Speaker: —

MUCH has been said and attempted to be done to regulate the
exterior part of our religion; but, sir, we bleed inwardly.
Much endeavor hath been to amend the deformed shape
we were in, and to new govern the government; yet, sir, this
is but the leaves of good religion, fit, I confess notwithstanding,
to be taken care of for beauty and for ornament. Nay, some
leaves are fit and necessary to be preserved for shadow and for
shelter to the blossoms and the fruit.

The fruit of all is good life, which you must never expect tc
see, unless the blossoms be pure and good; that is, unless your
doctrines be sound and true.

Sir, I speak it with full grief of heart, whilst we are thus
long pruning and composing of the leaves, or rather whilst some
would pluck all leaves away, our blossoms are blasted; and
whilst we sit here in cure of government and ceremonials, we
are poisoned in our doctrinals. And at whose door will the guilt
and sin of all this lie?

Qui non vetat peccare cum potest, jubet.

It is true that this mischief grows not by our consent; and
yet I know not by what unhappy fate there is at present such

SIR EDWARD DERING 1809

an all-daring liberty, such a lewd licentiousness, for all men
venting their several senses — senseless senses — in matter of
religion, as never was in any age or in any nation until this
Parliament were met together.

Sir, it belongs to us to take heed that our countenance, the
countenance of this honorable House, be not prostituted to sinis-
ter ends by bold offenders. If it be in our power to give a
remedy, a timely and seasonable remedy, to these great and
growing evils, and if we, being also put in mind, shall neglect
to do it, we then do pluck their sins upon our own heads.

Alienum qui fert scelus, facit suum.

Shall I be bold to give you a very few instances? one for a
hundred, wherewith our pulpits do groan ?

Mr. Speaker, there is a certain newborn, unseen, ignorant,
dangerous, desperate way of independence. Are we, sir, for this
independent way ? Nay, are we for the elder brother of it, the
presbyterial form ? I have not yet heard any one gentleman
within these walls stand up and assert his thoughts here for
either of these ways, and yet we are made the patrons and pro-
tectors of these so different, so repugnant innovations; witness
the several dedications to us. . . .-

One absurdity leads to a thousand, and when you are down
the hill of error there is no bottom but in hell, and that is bot-
tomless too. Shall I be bold to give you one (and but one) in-
stance more ? Much clamor now there is against our public
liturgy, though hallowed with the blood of some of the first com-
posers thereof. And surely, sir, some parts of it may be well cor-
rected. But the clamors now go very high. Impudence and
ignorance are now grown so frontless that it is loudly expected
by many that you should utterly abrogate all forms of public
worship, and at least if you have a short form yet not to impose
the use of it. Extirpation of episcopacy, that hope is already
wallowed, and now the same men are as greedy for the abolition
of the liturgy, that so the Church of England in her public
prayers may hereafter turn a babbler at all adventure — a brain-
less, stupid, and ignorant conceit of some. . . .

I might have added in due place above a mention of: (i)
Frequent schismatical conventicles. (2) That tailors, shoemakers,
braziers, feltmakers do climb our public pulpits. (3) That several

odd irregular fasts have been held for partial venting of private
v — 114

l8lo SIR EDWARD DERING

flatteries of some; slanders of other members of this house. (4)
That the distinction of the clergy and laity is popish and anti-
Christian and ought no longer to remain. (5) That the Lord's
Prayer was not taught us to be used. (6) That no national
Church can be a true Church of God. (7) That the visible Church
of anti-Christ did make the King head of the Church. (8) That
supreme power in Church affairs is in every several congregation.
(9) That a presbytery without a Bishop was in the world before it
was at Geneva. (10) That it is a heinous sin to be present when
prayers are read out of a book, (n) That to communicate in
presence of a profane person is to partake of his profaneness.
(12) That Christ's kingdom hath been a candle under a bushel,
whilst anti-Christ hath outreigned him for one thousand six hun-
dred years together.

Many more instances at little leisure I can gather, which to-
gether have begotten a general increase of open Libertinism,
secret Atheism, bold Arminianism, desperate Socinianism, stupid
Anabaptism, and with these the new Chiliastes, and the willful-
ness of Papists strangely and strongly confirmed by these dis-
tractions.

Good God! look down and direct our consultations, the best
issue whereof, I think, would be to debate the whole debate of
religion out of our doors, by putting it into a free synod, where-
upon I doubt not but we should grow unanimous in all our
other works.

i8n

RAYMOND DESEZE

(1748-1828)

JAYMOND DESEZE (who after the Bourbon Restoration was known
as Raymond, Count de Seze) has been greatly admired for
his boldness in defending Louis XVI. before the Convention
of 1792-93, which condemned and ordered him to the scaffold. The
peroration of his speech in behalf of Louis represents the whole so
fully, and is so fully characteristic of the speaker, that the reader
will have no great difficulty in deciding the extent to which Deseze
impressed the Terrorists around him as an uncompromising and dan-
gerous opponent of their methods. He was born in Bordeaux in 1748.
Practicing at the Paris bar, he had already become celebrated as an
advocate when Malesherbes asked him to undertake the King's defense
before the Convention. The result was a foregone conclusion and it
might be unjust to expect from Deseze a more burning zeal than he
shows for the interests of his royal client. He does show dignified
and manly adherence as a lawyer to the cause of a client who had
no other friend, and that is much. After the Restoration, he was re-
warded for the speech by being made President of the Court of
Cassation and a peer of France. He died in 1828. Napoleon once
denounced him as an English agent. This is said to be unjust; and
even if it were true, it would not be a reproach to a Royalist at-
tempting to restore the Bourbons through the influence of their for-
eign allies.

DEFENDING LOUIS XVI.

(Delivered in the French Convention, December izth, 1792)
Representatives of the Nation: —

THAT moment is at length arrived when Louis, accused in the
name of the French people, appears, surrounded by his own
council, in order to exhibit his conduct to the eyes of man-
kind. A celebrated republican hath said that the calamities of
kings always inspire the minds of those men with sympathy and
tenderness who have lived under a monarchical form of govern-
ment. If this maxim be true, who can invoke it with more jus-
tice than Louis, whose misfortunes are unbounded, and whose

1812 RAYMOND DESEZE

losses and calamities cannot be calculated ? You have called him
to your bar, and he appears before you with calmness and with
dignity, fortified in the consciousness of his own innocence and
in the goodness of his intentions. These are testimonies which
must console, these are testimonies of which it is impossible to
bereave him. He can only declare to you his innocence; I ap-
pear here in order to demonstrate it; and I shall adduce the
proofs before that very people in whose name he is now accused.

The present silence demonstrates to me that the day of jus-
tice has at length succeeded to the days of prejudice. The mis-
fortunes of kings have something in them infinitely more affecting
than those of private men; and he who formerly occupied the
most brilliant throne in the universe ought to excite a still more
powerful interest in his behalf.

I wish that I now spoke before the whole nation; but it will
be sufficient to address myself to its representatives. Louis well
knows that the eyes of all Europe are fixed upon this prosecu-
tion; but his mind is entirely occupied with France. He is sure
that posterity will carefully collect and examine the charges and
proofs adduced against him, but he thinks only of his contempo-
raries ; and it is the first wish of his . heart to undeceive them.
If I were only addressing myself at this moment to his judges, 1
should say: <( Royalty is abolished, and you cannot now pronounce
any other sentence against him >J ; but I am speaking to the peo-
ple. I shall therefore examine the situation of Louis previous to
the abolition of royalty and the situation of Louis at its abo-
lition.

Nations are sovereigns; they are at liberty to assume any
species of government that appears most agreeable to themselves.
After having recognized and discovered the badness of their an-
cient form, they may enact for themselves a new 'one ; this is a
position which one of the council of Louis procured the insertion
of in the constitutional code. But the whole nation cannot exer-
cise the sovereignty; it is necessary, therefore, that it should
delegate the exercise of it.

In 1789 the people of France demanded a monarchical form
of government; now a monarchical government requires the in-
violability of the chief, and this inviolability was established, not
in behalf of the king, but of the nation.

Much has been said on this subject. Some have pretended
that it is not a synallagmatic contract, but a delegation. It is,

RAYMOND DESEZE 1813

however, a contract until it is revoked; but let it be called a
mandate if you please! Let it be recollected, however, that the
mandatory is not obliged to submit to any other conditions, or
any other penalties, than those expressed in the letter of the
compact. I open the book of the Constitution, and in the second
chapter, which has by way of title <( Royalty, M I there find that
the king is inviolable; there is not any exception in, nor any
modification of, this article, but certain circumstances may occur,
when the first public functionary may cease to enjoy this char-
acter of inviolability. The following is the first instance. '

ART. V. <(If the king shall not take the oath, or, after having
taken it, he retract, he shall be considered as having abdicated the
royalty. »

The nation here hath foreseen a crime and enacted a for-
feiture, but there is not a single word to be found concerning
either trial or judgment. However, as, without retracting an
oath, a king might betray and favor criminal and hostile princi-
ples against the State, the nation hath been aware of this, and
the Constitution hath provided against it.

ART. VI. <4If the king place himself at the head of an army and
direct the forces against the nation, or if he doth not oppose him-
self, by a formal act, to any enterprise of this kind made in his
name, he shall be considered as having abdicated the throne."

I beseech you to reflect on the heinous nature of this offense;
there cannot be a more criminal one. It supposes all the machi-
nations, all the perfidies, all the treasons, all the horrors, all the
calamities of bloody civil war; and yet what does the consti-
tution pronounce ? The presumption of having abdicated the
throne !

ART. VII. «If the king, having left the kingdom, shall not return
immediately after an invitation made to him by the legislative body,
then, etc."

What does the Constitution pronounce upon this occasion ?
The presumption of having abdicated the throne.

ART. VIII. says, " that after an abdication, either express or
implied, the king shall then be tried in the same manner as all other
citizens, for such crimes as he may commit after his abdication."

RAYMOND DESEZE

Louis is accused of sundry offenses. He is accused in the
name of the nation. Now, either these offenses have been foreseen
by the constitutional act, and then the corresponding punishment
is to be applied to them, or they have not; and if so, it follows
that no punishment can follow from their commission. But I
say that the most atrocious of all possible offenses hath been
foreseen — that of a cruel war against the nation; and this surely
includes all inferior crimes, and consequently points out the ex-
tent of all constitutional punishment.

I know that royalty being now abolished, deprivation cannot
at present be applied. But has not Louis a right to exclaim:
"What! will you, because you have abolished royalty, inflict a
punishment on me, not mentioned in the constitutional code ?
Because no existing law can punish me, will you create one ex-
pressly on purpose ? You possess every degree of power, it is
true, but there is one species which you dare not execute, that
of being unjust."

It has been said that Louis ought to be condemned as an en-
emy, but is he a greater enemy than if he had put himself at
the head of an army in order to act against the nation ? And
you all know that in such a case, he could not have incurred
more than a forfeiture of the crown! But if you take away
from Louis the prerogative of being inviolable as a king, you
cannot deprive him of the right of being tried as a citizen. And
I here demand of you, where are those propitiatory forms of jus-
tice ? Where are those juries which are so many hostages, as it
were, for the lives and honor of citizens ? Where is that propor-
tion of suffrages which the law has so wisely required ? Where
is that silent scrutiny which in the same urn incloses the opinion
and the conscience of the judge ?

I now speak with the frankness becoming a freeman; it is in
vain that I look around and search among you for judges — I
can see none but accusers. You wish to pronounce upon the
fate of Louis, and yet you have accused him! Will you decide
his doom after having already expressed your opinion on his con-
duct ?

7V//-; ' \TTLliS AT VERSAILLES.

Photogravure after a Photograph — By Permission of The Werner Com-
pany.

[MIL Camille Desmoulins made his speeches of 1789, the palace at
Versailles belonged to the Bourbons. In 1789, however, the excited
Parisians insisted on removing the royal family to Paris, and
though since then the palace has been repeatedly used as a royal or imperial
residence, the people have reasserted their right to it, and now use it chiefly
for a Museum of French History, devoted largely to paintings. Some of the
most celebrated of these are exhibited iu the Gallery of Battles.

CAMILLE DESMOUL1NS

(1760-1794)

IHEN the ill-fated Louis XVI. dismissed Necker, Camille Des-
moulins, hearing the news in a cafe in the Palais Royal,
leaped on a table, defied the police, and with a pistol in
each hand, made the speech which precipitated the actual Revolution.
He called the people to arms, declaring that the action of the King
was (< the tocsin for the Bartholomew of the patriots. w From that
time until he was executed with the Dantonists in April 1794, Des-
moulins was one of the great forces of the Revolution. He was born
at Guise, in Picardy, March zd, 1760. His father, who was Lieutenant-
General of the bailiwick of Guise, educated him carefully, and Camille
acquired a familiarity with the classics which, as editor of the Vieux
Cordelier, he made use of to show the advantage of republics over
monarchies, of democracies over aristocracies. He stammered so pain-
fully that, as a rule, his great eloquence found vent only at the point
of his pen. His street speeches were made only when he was trans-
ported out of himself by excitement, and only scraps of them are
reported. It is said that in his great speech of July i2th, 1789, on
the dismissal of Necker, the stammering habit which usually kept
him silent in public assemblages, lost its hold on him, and that he
spoke with the utmost fluency. The extract, ( Live Free or Die,*
translated from the Vieux Cordelier, is characteristic both of his style
and of his habit of thought. He is always classical. It was through
too frequent illustrations from Tacitus that he aroused the anger of
Robespierre, which sent him to the guillotine.

LIVE FREE OR DIE
(February 1788)

ONE difference between the monarchy and the republic, which
alone should suffice to make the people reject with horror
all monarchial rule and make them prefer the republic
regardless of the cost of its establishment, is that in a democ-
racy, though the people may be deceived, yet, at least, they love
virtue. It is merit that they believe they put in power in place

CAMILLE DESMOULINS

of the rascals who are the very essence of monarchies. The
vices, the concealments, and the crimes which are the diseases
of republics are the very health and existence of monarchies.
Cardinal Richelieu avowed openly in his political principles,
that *the King should always avoid using the talents of thor-
oughly honest men.8 Long before him Sallust said: "Kings
cannot get along . without rascals. On the contrary, they should
fear to trust the honest and the upright.*

It is, therefore, only under a democracy that the good citizen
can reasonably hope to see a cessation of the triumphs of in-
trigue and crime; and to this end the people need only to be
enlightened.

There is yet this difference between a monarchy and the
republic; the reigns of Tiberius, of Claudius, of Nero, of Calig-
ula, of Domitian, had happy beginnings. In fact, all reigns
make a joyous entry, but only as a delusion. Therefore the Roy-
alists laugh at the present state of France as if its violent and
terrible entry under the republic must always last.

Everything gives umbrage to a tyrant. If a citizen have pop-
ularity, he is becoming a rival to the prince. Consequently, he
is stirring up civil strife, and is a suspect. If, on the contrary,
he flee popularity and seclude himself in the corner of his
own fireside, this retired life makes him remarked, and he is a
suspect. If he is a rich man, there is an imminent peril that
he corrupt the people with his largesses, and he is a suspect.
Are you poor ? How then ! Invincible emperors, this man must
be closely watched; no one so enterprising as he who has noth-
ing. He is a suspect! Are you in character sombre, melan-
choly, or neglectful ? You are afflicted by the condition of pub-
lic affairs, and are a suspect.

If, on the contrary, the citizen enjoy himself and have result-
ant indigestion, he is only seeking diversion because his ruler
has had an attack of gout, which made his Majesty realize his
age. Therefore he is a suspect. Is he virtuous and austere in
his habits? Ah! he is a new Brutus with his Jacobin sever-
ity, censuring the amiable and well-groomed court. He is a
suspect. If he be a philosopher, an orator, or a poet, it will serve
him ill to be of greater renown than those who govern, for can
it be permitted to pay more attention to the author living on a
fourth floor than to the emperor in his gilded palace. He is a
suspect.

CAMILLE DESMOULINS

1817

Has one made a reputation as a warrior — he is but the more
dangerous by reason of his talent. There are many resources
with an inefficient general. If he is a traitor he cannot so
quickly deliver his army to the enemy. But an officer of merit
like an Agricola — if he be disloyal, not one can be saved. There-
fore, all such had better be removed and promptly placed at a
distance from the army. Yes, he is a suspect.

Tacitus tells us that there was anciently in Rome a law spec-
ifying the crimes of <( Lese-Majeste*. w That crime carried with it
the punishment of death. Under the Roman Republic treasons
were reduced to but four kinds, viz., abandoning an army in the
country of an enemy; exciting sedition; the maladministration of
the public treasury; and the impairment by inefficiency of the
majesty of the Roman people. But the Roman emperors needed
more clauses, that they could place cities and citizens under pro-
scription.

Augustus was the first to extend the list of offenses that were
* Lese-Majeste* w or revolutionary, and under his successors the
extensions were made until none were exempt. The slightest
action was a State offense. A simple look, sadness, compassion, a
sigh, even silence was w Lese-Majeste" * and disloyalty to the mon-
arch. One must needs show joy at the execution of their parent
or friend lest they would perish themselves. Citizens, liberty
must be a great benefit, since Cato disemboweled himself rather
than have a king. And what king can we compare in greatness
and heroism to the Caesar whose rule Cato would not endure ?
Rousseau truly says: "There is in liberty as in innocence and
virtue a satisfaction one only feels in their enjoyment and a
pleasure which can cease only when they are lost.*

SIR SIMON D'EWES

(1602-1650)

SIMON (SiMONDS?) D'EwES, the celebrated antiquary, was a
Member of the Long Parliament and helped by his elo-
quence to make it celebrated among the deliberative bodies
of the world. Of the three of his speeches of 1640 which are pre-
served in verbatim reports, that on the ( Antiquity of Cambridge' is
the most characteristic of the man and of the learning of the edu-
cated classes of a time when education, devoting itself to what Ra-
leigh called <( tickle points of niceness,* was rendering its possessors
foreign to the great body of the English people. On the eve of
one of the greatest revolutions of history, D'Ewes took advantage
of the fact that the name of Cambridge appeared above that of Ox-
ford in a document under consideration by the House to make a
learned and interesting speech — at which, under the circumstances,
posterity cannot fail to wonder.

He was born at Coxden, in Dorsetshire, December i8th, 1602, and
died April 8th, 1650. He collected the journals of the Parliaments
held during the reign of Elizabeth, and his manuscripts sold after
his death to Sir Robert Harley are now among the treasures of the
British Museum.

THE ANTIQUITY OF CAMBRIDGE
(Delivered in Parliament, January 2ist, 1640)

I STAND up to persuade, if it may be, the declining of the pres-
ent question and the further dispute of this business. Yes-
terday we had long debate about the putting out of a
word, and now we are fallen upon the dispute of putting one
word before another. I account no honor to Cambridge that it
got the precedency by voices at the former committee, nor will
it be any glory to Oxford to gain it by voices here, where we all
know the multitudes of borough towns of the western parts of
England do send so many worthy Members hither, that if we
measure things by number, and not by weight, Cambridge is

SIR SIMON D'EWES 1819

sure to lose it. I would therefore propound a more noble way
and means for the decision of the present controversy than by
question, in which, if the University of Oxford (which for my
own part I do highly respect and honor) shall obtain the prize,
it will be far more glory to it than to carry it by multitude of
voices, which, indeed, can be none at all. Let us therefore dis-
pute it by reason, and not make an idol of either place, and if I
shall be so convinced I shall readily change my vote, wishing we
may find the same ingenuity in the Oxford men.

There are two principal respects, besides others, in which these
famous universities may claim precedency each of the other.

Firstly, in respect of their being, as they were places of note
in the elder ages.

Secondly, as they were ancient nurseries and seed plots of
learning. If I do not, therefore, prove that Cambridge was a
renowned city at least three hundred years before there was
a house of Oxford standing, and whilst brute beasts fed, or corn
was planted on that place, where the same city is now seated,
and that Cambridge was a nursery of learning before Oxford
was known to have a Grammar School in it, I will yield up the
bucklers. If I should lose time to reckon up the vain allegations
produced for the antiquity of Oxford by Twyne, and of Cam-
bridge by Cajus, I should but repeat deliria senum, for I account
the most of that they have published in print to be no better.
But I find my authority without exception, that in the ancient
catalogue of cities of Britain, Cambridge is the ninth in number,
where London itself is but the eleventh, and who would have
thought that ever Oxford should have contended for precedency
with Cambridge, which London gave it above twelve hundred
years. This I find in Hildas Albanius,* his British story, who
died about the year 520, being the ancientest domestic monu-
ment we have (page 60) ; and in a Saxon anonymous story in
Latin, touching the Britons and Saxons (page 39), who saith of
himself that he lived in the days of Penda, King of the Mer-
cians, in the tenth year of his reign, and that he knew him well,
which falls out to be near the year 620. And lastly, I find the
catalogue of the said British cities, with some little variation, to be
set down in 'Nennius,' his Latin story of Britain (page 38), and
he wrote the same, as he says of himself, in the year 880. They
all call it <<Cair-grant,))— the word "Cair" in the old Celtic
tongue signifying city.

SIR SIMON D'EWES

These three stories are exotic, and rare monuments, remain-
ing yet only in ancient manuscripts amongst us not known to
many; but the authority of them is irrefragable and without
exception. The best and most ancient copies that I have seen
of ( Gildas Albanius J and ( Nennius * remain in the University
library of Cambridge, being those I have vouched, and the
( Saxon Anonymous* in a library we have near us. This Cair-
grant is not only expounded by Alfred of Beverley to signify
Cambridge, but also by William de Ramsey, Abbot of Croyland,
in his manuscript story of the life of ( Guthlacas, ' ignorantly in
those elder days reputed a Saint, the said William goes further,
and says it was so called a granta flumine. This place remained
still a city of fame and repute a long time under the reign of
the English Saxons, and is called in divers of -the old manuscript
Saxon annals " Grantecearten. >J And notwithstanding the great de-
vastations it suffered with other places, by reason of the Danish
incursions, yet in the first tome or volume of the book of
( Domes Dei y (for now I come to cite records) it appears to have
been a place of considerable moment, having in it decem custodias
and a castle of great strength and extent, and so I have done
with Cambridge as a renowned place.

And now I come to speak to it, as it hath been a nursery of
learning, nor will I begin higher with it than the time of the
learned Saxon monarch King Alfred, because I suppose no man
will question or gainsay but that there are sufficient testimonies
of certain persons that did together in Cambridge study the arts
and sciences much about that time. And it grew to be a place
so famous for learning about the time of William I., the Norman,
that he sent his younger son Henry thither to be there in-
structed, who himself being afterwards King of England, by the
name of Henry I., was also surnamed Beauclerk, in respect of
his great knowledge. If I should undertake to allege and vouch
the records and other monuments of good authority, which assert
and prove the increase and nourishing estate of this University
in the succeeding ages, I should spend more time than our
great and weighty occasions at this present will permit; it shall
therefore suffice to have added, that the most ancient and first
endowed college of England was Valence College in Cambridge,
which after the foundation thereof, as appears by one of our
Parliament Rolls remaining upon record in the Tower of Lon-
don, received the new name or appellation of Pembroke Hall; it

SIR SIMON D'EWES 1 82 1

is in Rota. Parliam. de Anno 38 H. 6 num. 31. It appearing there-
fore so evidently by all that I have said, that Cambridge is in
all respects the elder sister (which I speak not to derogate from
Oxford), my humble advice is, that we lay aside the present
question, as well to avoid division amongst overselves as to in-
tomb all further emulation between the two sisters, and that we
suffer the present bill to pass as it is now penned; and the
rather, because I think Oxford had the precedence in the last
bill of this nature that passed this House.

1822

ORVILLE DEWEY

(1794-1882)

SRVILLE DEWEY, one of the favorite platform and pulpit ora-
tors of the second quarter of the nineteenth century, was
born at Sheffield, Massachusetts, 1794, and died there, March
2ist, 1882. He had a style of admirable lucidity, and his addresses
show that he joined habits of logical thinking to sound scholarship.
He was by profession a clergyman, and his sermons, addresses, and
works of a general character, keep their place in public libraries.

THE GENIUS OF DEMOSTHENES

>TpHE favorite idea of a genius among us is of one who never
studies, or who studies nobody can tell when, — at mid-
night, or at odd times and intervals, — and now and then
strikes out, "at a heat," as the phrase is, some wonderful pro-
duction. * The young man, w it is often said, <( has genius
enough, if he would only study." Now, the truth is, that the
genius will study; it is that in the mind which does study; that
is the very nature of it. I care not to say that it will always
use books. All study is not reading, any more than all reading
is study.

Attention is the very soul of genius; not the fixed eye, not
the poring over a book, but the fixed thought. It is, in fact, an
action of the mind which is steadily concentrated upon one idea,
or one series of ideas; which collects, in one point, the rays of
the soul, till they search, penetrate, and fire the whole train of
its thoughts. And while the fire burns within, the outside may
be indeed cold, indifferent, negligent, absent in appearance; he
may be an idler or a wanderer, apparently without aim or in-
tent, but still the fire burns within. And what, though * it
bursts forth " at length, as has been said, w like volcanic fires,
with spontaneous, original, native force * ? It only shows the in-
tense action of the elements beneath. What though it break
forth like lightning from the cloud ? The electric fire had been
collecting in the firmament through many a silent, clear, and

ORVILLE DEWEY

1823

calm day. What though the might of genius appear in one de-
cisive blow, struck in some moment of high debate, or at the
crisis of a nation's peril ?

That mighty energy, though it may have heaved in the
breast of Demosthenes, was once a feeble, infant thought. A
mother's eye watched over its dawnings. A father's care guarded
its early youth. It soon trod, with youthful steps, the halls
of learning, and found other fathers to wake and to watch for
it, even as it finds them here. It went on, but silence was
upon its path, and the deep stragglings of the inward soul
silently ministered to it. The elements around breathed upon it,
and " touched it to finer issues. w The golden ray of heaven fell
upon it and ripened its expanding faculties. The slow revolu-
tions of years slowly added to its collected energies and treas-
ures, till, in its hour of glory, it stood forth embodied in the
form of living, commanding, irresistible eloquence. The world
wonders at the manifestation, and says : <( Strange, strange that
it should come thus unsought, unpremeditated, unprepared ! *
But the truth is, there is no more a miracle in it than there
is in the towering of the pre-eminent forest tree, or in the flow-
ing of the mighty and irresistible river, or in the wealth and
waving of the boundless harvest.

THE RUST OF RICHES

AH! THE rust of riches! — not that portion of them which is
kept bright in good and holy uses — (< and the consuming
fire B of the passions which wealth engenders ' No rich man
— I lay it down as an axiom of all experience — no rich man is
safe who is not a benevolent man. No rich man is safe, but on
the imitation of that benevolent God who is the possessor and
dispenser of all the riches of the universe. What else mean the
miseries of a selfish, luxurious, and fashionable life everywhere ?
What mean the sighs that come up from the purlieus and
couches and most secret haunts of all splendid and self-
indulgent opulence ? Do not tell me that other men are suffer-
ers too. Say not that the poor and destitute and forlorn are
miserable also. Ah! just Heaven! thou hast in thy mysterious
wisdom appointed to them a lot hard, full hard, to bear. Poor
houseless wretches ! who " eat the bitter bread of penury, and

1824

ORVILLE DEWEY

drink the baleful cup of misery M; the winter's winds blow keenly
through your w looped and windowed raggedness w ; your children
wander about unshod, unclothed, untended; I wonder not that
ye sigh. But why should those who are surrounded with every-
thing that heart can wish, or imagination conceive — the very
crumbs that fall from whose table of prosperity might feed hun-
dreds— why should they sigh amidst their profusion and splen-
dor ? They have broken the bond that should connect power
with usefulness and opulence with mercy. That is the reason.
They have taken up their treasures, and wandered away into a
forbidden world of their own, far from the sympathies of suffer-
ing humanity; and the heavy night-dews are descending upon
their splendid revels; and the all-gladdening light of heavenly
beneficence is exchanged for the sickly glare of selfish enjoy-
ment; and happiness, the blessed angel that hovers over gener-
ous deeds and heroic virtues, has fled away from that world of
false gaiety and fashionable exclusion.

1825

SAMUEL DEXTER

(1761-1816)

&N THE fourth of August, 1806, Thomas O. Selfridge, an attorney
at law, shot and killed Charles Austin on the public Ex-
change in Boston. There had been a newspaper controversy
between Selfridge and Austin's father, and when the case came to
trial, the celebrated Samuel Dexter, who defended Selfridge, had to
meet a charge that his client had « armed himself and sought a
quarrel, after first calling the father of his victim opprobrious names
in the newspapers.* The defense was handled with great skill by
an eloquent appeal to a " higher law n which, though some have ques-
tioned its morality, made it a model for defenses in similar cases
in all parts of the Union. This appeal, made in the peroration of
the speech delivered at the trial of the defendant in Boston, resulted
in the defendant's acquittal.

Dexter was born in Boston, May i4th, 1761. As a young man
he became distinguished for his rebellious attitude towards the Eng-
lish government. After the Revolution he was elected to Congress,
serving in both House and Senate. He was Secretary of War under
the administration of John Adams, and Secretary of the Treasury
during a part of that of Jefferson. After leaving the Cabinet, he
took up the practice of law in Boston and made even a greater rep-
utation at the bar than he had already made in public life.

«THE HIGHER LAW » OF SELF-DEFENSE
(Peroration of the Speech in the Case of Selfridge)

I HAVE hitherto admitted that the publication in the newspaper
was a fault in the defendant, nor am I disposed entirely to
justify it; yet circumstances existed which went far to exten-
uate it. He had been defamed on a subject, the delicacy of
which, perhaps, will not be understood by you, as you are not
lawyers, without some explanation. Exciting persons to bring
suits is an infamous offense, for which a lawyer is liable to
indictment, and to be turned away from the bar. It is so fatal
to the reputation of a lawyer, that it is wounding him in the
v — 115

1826 SAMUEL DEXTER

nicest point, to charge him with it. It is the point of honor;
and charging him with barratry, or stirring up suits, is like call-
ing a soldier a coward. Mr. Austin, the father, had accused the
defendant publicly of this offense, respecting a transaction in
which his conduct had been punctiliously correct. The defendant
first applied to him in person, and with good temper, to retract
the charge; afterwards, in conversations with Mr. Welsh, Mr.
Austin acknowledged the accusation to be false, and promised to
contradict it as publicly as he had made it. Yet he neglected to
do it; again he said he had done it, — but the fact appeared to be
otherwise. This induced the defendant to demand a denial of
it in writing. Though Mr. Austin privately acknowledged he had
injured Mr. Selfridge, yet he refused to make him an adequate
recompense when he neglected to make the denial as public as
the charge. This was a state of war between them upon this
subject, in which the more the defendant annoyed his enemy,
the less power he had to hurt him. It was, therefore, a species
of self-defense; and Mr. Austin, who had first been guilty of
defamation, perhaps had little cause to complain. To try the
correctness of this, we will imagine an extreme case.

Suppose a man should have established his reputation as a
common slanderer and calumniator by libeling the most virtuous
and eminent characters of his country, from Washington and
Adams down through the whole list of American patriots; sup-
pose such a one to have stood for twenty years in the kennel,
and thrown mud at every well-dressed passenger; suppose him
to have published libels until his style of defamation had become
as notorious as his face, — would not every one say that such
conduct was some excuse for bespattering him in turn ?

I do not apply this to any individual; but it is a strong case
to try a principle. And if such conduct would amount almost to
a justification of him who should retaliate, will not the slander
of Mr. Austin against Mr. Selfridge furnish some excuse for
him?

It has also been stated to you, gentlemen, and some books
havo been read to prove it, that a man cannot be justified or ex-
cused in killing another in his own defense, unless a felony were
attempted or intended. Some confusion seems to have been
produced by this, which I will attempt to dissipate. It has been
settled that if a felony be attempted, the party injured may kill
the offender, without retreating as far as he safely can; but that

SAMUEL DEXTER 1827

if the offense intended be not a felony, he cannot excuse the
killing in his own defense, unless he so retreat, provided cir-
cumstances will permit. On this principle, all the books that
have been read on this point may easily be reconciled. But the
position contended for by the opposing counsel is in direct con-
tradiction to one authority which they themselves have read. In
the fourth volume of Blackstone's Commentaries,* page 185, the
law is laid down as follows: <( The party assaulted must therefore
flee as far as he conveniently can, either by reason of some
wall, ditch, or other impediment, or as far as the fierceness of
the assault will permit him: for it may be so fierce as not to
allow him to yield a step, without manifest danger of his life, or
enormous bodily harm; and then, in his defense, he may kill his
assailant instantly. And this is the doctrine of universal justice,
as well as of the municipal law.w

Also in i Hawkin's Pleas of the Crown, chap. 29, § 13, the
law on this point is stated thus : "And now I am to consider
homicide se defendendo, which seems to be, where one, who has
no other possible means of preserving his life from one who
combats with him on a sudden quarrel, or of defending his per-
son from one who attempts to beat him (especially if such at-
tempt be made upon him in his own house), kills the person by
whom he is reduced to such an inevitable necessity.*

From these two highly respectable authorities, it appears that,
though nothing more be attempted than to do great bodily in-
jury, or even to beat a man, and there be no possibility of avoid-
ing it but by killing the assailant, it is excusable so to do.

When the weight and strength of the cane, or rather cudgel,
which the deceased selected is considered, and the violence with
which it was used, can it be doubted that great bodily harm
would have been the consequence, if Selfridge had not defended
himself? The difference between this weapon and the pistol
made use of by the defendant, perhaps, is greatly exaggerated
by the imagination. The danger from the former might be
nearly as great as from the latter. When a pistol is discharged
at a man, in a moment of confusion and agitation, it is very un-
certain whether it will take effect at all; and if it should, the
chances are, perhaps, four to one, that the wound will not be
mortal. Still further, when the pistol is once discharged, it is of
little or no use; but with a cane, a man, within reach of his ob-
ject, can hardly miss it; and if the first blow should prove inef-

SAMUEL DEXTER

fectual, he can repeat his strokes until he has destroyed his
enemy.

If it were intended to excite contempt for the laws of the
country, a more effectual method could hardly be taken than to
tell a man, who has a soul within him, that if one attempt to rob
him of a ten-dollar bill, this is a felony, and therefore esteemed
by the law an injury of so aggravated a nature that he may
lawfully kill the aggressor; but that if the same man should
whip and kick him on the public Exchange, this is only a tres-
pass, to which he is bound to submit rather than put in jeopardy
the life of the assailant; and the laws will recompense him in
damages.

Imagine that you read in a Washington newspaper that on a
certain day, immediately on the rising of Congress, Mr. A, of
Virginia, called Mr. B, of Massachusetts, a scoundrel for voting
against his resolution, and proceeded deliberately to cut off his
ears. Mr. B was armed with a good sword cane, but observed
that his duty as a citizen forbade him to endanger the life of
Mr. A, for, that cutting off a man's ear was by law no felony;
and he had read in law books that courts of justice were the
only proper vindices injuriarum, and that he doubted not that,
by means of a lawsuit, he should obtain a reasonable compensa-
tion for his ears. What are the emotions excited in your breasts
at this supposed indignity and exemplary patience of the repre-
sentative of your country? Would you bow to him with pro-
found respect on his return ? or rather would not his dignity and
usefulness, by universal consent, be lost forever ?

We have now taken a view of the facts and the positive rules
of law that apply to them; and it is submitted to you with great
confidence that the defendant has brought himself within the
strictest rules, and completely substantiated his defense by show-
ing that he was under a terrible necessity of doing the act, and
that by law he is excused. It must have occurred to you, how-
ever, in the course of this investigation, that our law has not
been abundant in its provisions for protecting a man from gross
insult and disgrace. Indeed, it was hardly to be expected that
the sturdy hunters who laid the foundations of the common law
would be very refined in their notions. There is, in truth, much
intrinsic difficulty in legislating on this subject. Laws must be
made to operate equally on all members of the community; and
such is the difference in the situations and feelings of men that

SAMUEL DEXTER

1829

no general rule on this subject can properly apply to all. That
which is an irreparable injury to one man, and which he would
feel himself bound to repel even by the instantaneous death of
the aggressor, or by his own, would be a very trivial misfortune
to another. There are men in every civilized community whose
happiness and usefulness would be forever destroyed by a beat-
ing which another member of the same community would volun-
tarily receive for a five-dollar bill. Were the laws to authorize
a man of elevated mind and refined feelings of honor to defend
himself from indignity by the death of the aggressor, they must
at the same time furnish an excuse to the meanest chimney
sweeper in the country for punishing his sooty companion, who
should fillip him on the cheek, by instantly thrusting his scraper
into his belly. But it is too much to conclude from this difficulty
in stating exceptions to the general rule, that extreme cases do
not furnish them. It is vain, and worse than vain, to prescribe
laws to a community which will require a dereliction of all dig-
nity of character, and subject the most elevated to outrages from
the most vile. If such laws did exist, the best that could be
hoped would be that they would be broken. Extreme cases are,
in their nature, exceptions to all rules; and when a good citizen
says that, the law not having specified them, he must have a
right to use his own best discretion on the subject, he only
treats the law of his country in the same manner in which every
Christian necessarily treats the precepts of his religion. The law
of his Master is, (< Resist not evil w ; w If a man smite thee on one
cheek, turn to him the other also." No exceptions to these rules
are stated; yet does not every rational Christian necessarily make
them ? I have been led to make these observations, not because
I think them necessary in the defense of Mr. Self ridge, but be-
cause I will have no voluntary agency in degrading the spirit of
my country. The greatest of all public calamities would be a
pusillanimous spirit that would tamely surrender personal dignity
to every invader. The opposing council have read to you from
books of acknowledged authority that the right of self-defense
was not given by the law of civil society, and that that law can-
not take it away. It is founded, then, on the law of nature,
which is of higher authority than any human institution. This
law enjoins us to be useful in proportion to our capacities; to
protect the powers of being useful, by all means that nature has
given us, and to secure our own happiness, as well as that of

1830 SAMUEL DEXTER

others. These sacred precepts cannot be obeyed without secur-
ing to ourselves the respect of others. Surely, I need not say to
you that the man who is daily beaten on the public Exchange
cannot retain his standing in society by recurring to the laws.
Recovering daily damages will rather aggravate the contempt
that the community will heap upon him; nor need I say that
when a man has patiently suffered one beating he has almost
insured a repetition of the insult.

It is a most serious calamity for a man of high qualifications
for usefulness, and delicate sense of honor, to be driven to such
a crisis, yet should it become inevitable, he is bound to meet it
like a man, to summon all the energies of the soul, rise above
ordinary maxims, poise himself on his own magnanimity, and
hold himself responsible only to his God. Whatever may be the
consequences, he is bound to bear them; to stand like Mount
Atlas,

<(When storms and tempests thunder on its brow,
And oceans break their billows at his feet.*

Do not believe that I am inculcating opinions tending to dis-
turb the peace of society. On the contrary, they are the only
principles that can preserve it. It is more dangerous for the
laws to give security to a man disposed to commit outrages on
the persons of his fellow-citizens than to authorize those who
must otherwise meet irreparable injury to defend themselves
at every hazard. Men of eminent talents and virtues, on whose
exertions in perilous times the honor and happiness of their
country must depend, will always be liable to be degraded by
every daring miscreant, if they cannot defend themselves from
personal insult and outrage. Men of this description must always
feel that to submit to degradation and dishonor is impossible. Nor
is this feeling confined to men of that eminent grade. We have
thousands in our country who possess this spirit; and without
them we should soon deservedly cease to exist as an independent
nation. I respect the laws of my country and revere the pre-
cepts of our holy religion; I should shudder at shedding human
blood; I would practice moderation and forbearance to avoid so
terrible a calamity; yet should I ever be driven to that impass-
able point where degradation and disgrace begin, may this arm
shrink palsied from its socket if I fail to defend my own honor.

It has been irtimated that the principles of Christianity con-

SAMUEL DEXTER 1831

deran the defendant. If he is to be tried by this law, he cer-
tainly has a right to avail himself of one of its fundamental
principles. I call on you, then, to do to him, as in similar cir-
cumstances you would expect others to do to you; change situa-
tions for a moment and ask yourselves what you would have
done if attacked as he was. And instead of being necessitated
to act at the moment, and without reflection, take time to delib-
erate. Permit me to state for you your train of thought. You
would say: This man who attacks me appears young, athletic,
active, and violent. I am feeble and incapable of resisting him;
he has a heavy cane, which is undoubtedly a strong one, as he
had leisure to select it for the purpose; he may intend to kill
me; he may, from the violence of his passion, destroy me with-
out intending it; he may maim or greatly injure me; by beating
me he must disgrace me. This alone destroys all my prospects,
all my happiness, and all my usefulness. Where shall I fly when
thus rendered contemptible ? Shall I go abroad ? Every one will
point at me the finger of scorn. Shall I go home ? My children
— I have taught them to shrink from dishonor; will they call me
father ? What is life to me after suffering this outrage ? Why
should I endure this accumulated wretchedness, which is worse
than death, rather than put in hazard the life of my enemy?

Ask yourselves whether you would not make use of any
weapon that might be within your power to repel the injury;
and if it should happen to be a pistol, might you not, with sin-
cere feeling of piety, call on the Father of Mercies to direct the
stroke ?

While we reverence the precepts of Christianity, let us not
make them void by impracticable construction. They cannot be
set in opposition to the law of our nature; they are a second
edition of that law; they both proceed from the same Author.

Gentlemen, all that is dear to the defendant in his future life
is by the law of his country placed in your power. He cheer-
fully leaves it there. Hitherto he has suffered all that his duty
as a good citizen required with fortitude and patience; and if
more be yet in store for him, he will exhibit to his accusers an
example of patient submission to the laws. Yet permit me to
say in concluding his defense that he feels full confidence that
your verdict will terminate his sufferings.*

*The jury returned a verdict of «Not Guilty.*

1832

PORFIR1O DIAZ

(1830-)

IT THE Monterey banquet of 1898, President Diaz of Mexico
outlined the policy he has pursued in developing the re-
sources of his country — a policy modeled on that of Jeffer-
son and involving as fundamental principles the utmost possible
hospitality to immigration. Though he does not speak habitually in
public, President Diaz has a style of the greatest ease and flexibility,
illustrating in every sentence the suavity of intellect which has en-
abled him to establish a stable government in Mexico where so many
others who were mere soldiers had failed. Perhaps no other living
Latin-American has more of the faculty of pleasing than President
Diaz shows in complimenting Monterey for its achievements of peace-
ful progress.

He was born at Oaxaca, September isth, 1830. He received a
liberal education, but his enlistment when the United States invaded
Mexico in 1847 made him a soldier rather than the lawyer he might
have been. He served against Santa Anna in 1854; against Mar-
quez in 1861 ; and against Maximilian and the French from 1863 to
1867. In 1876 he drove out Lerdo, and the following year he became
President of Mexico, an office which he has held or controlled ever
since. The Constitution has been changed to allow him to succeed
himself, and if Mexico prosper under him in the future as it has
done in the past, he is likely to remain its President until he dies or
refuses to serve.

MEXICAN PROGRESS

(Delivered at the Banquet Given in His Honor at Monterey,
December 2ist, 1898)

Mr. Governor and Gentlemen: —

IN THE eloquent toast that we have just heard, there are thoughts
expressed so beautifully and with so pronounced a spirit of
friendship, that I can only accept them as a sign of the fully
reciprocated regard with which the author honors me. However
little I may deserve them, they nevertheless demand acknowledg-
ment.

PORFIRIO DIAZ 1833

Hence, in replying, I must begin by thanking you most cor-
dially. In the name of my fellow-guests, and in my own, I also
thank this attractive and beautiful city for the splendid welcome
with which it has honored us.

The impression made on us by its munificence is so pleasant
and so great that we do not know what to admire most and
what to be most thankful for, — whether for the charming hospi-
tality, elegance, and good taste shown in receiving us, or for the
striking exhibition of improvements we already knew by hearsay
and that now they are so kind as to show us in review.

If the hospitality and attentions extended to us make us
happy during the days we spend with our amiable hosts of
Nuevo Leon, the exhibition of their improvements gives us good
reason for knowing, appreciating, and admiring with proper na-
tional pride the abundant, varied, and worthy results of the spirit
of enterprise animating capital and industry, when governed by
a scrupulous honesty, supported by the good name which this
invaluable virtue perpetuates by its presence, and firmly protected
by a government which, with firm hand and clear and just con-
science, guarantees the life, the property, the liberty, the honor,
and all natural and civil rights of the man and of the citizen.

Sixteen years, more or less, of intelligent work under direction
of the great principles of prosperity we have just enumerated,
have been sufficient to awaken and put into productive action
the industrial intelligence and noble ambition of the citizens of
Nuevo Leon, while the well-deserved fame of the satisfactory re-
sults achieved has attracted, and is still attracting, from all quar-
ters, the capital, the industry, the energy, and all other faculties
belonging to that genius which, when stimulated amongst them-
selves and competing in worthy initiative and noble strength,
has extended, improved, and beautified every day this great
and typical display of the industrial progress of Nuevo Leon,
which, with well-founded and noble pride its beautiful capital
offers us.

It is certain that this magnificent picture is the objective
demonstration and measure of the present prosperity and ad-
vanced civilization of this intelligent and industrious people. But
this is not all; for after this, there is something which claims all
our attention, — so much the more imperiously, since this some-
thing tends to prepare a future still more prosperous. Never-
theless, I am not surprised at this, for it is only natural that a

1834

PORFIRIO DIAZ

people which has created men like Zaragoza and produced them
like Zuazua and Escobedo, Trevino, Naraujo, and so many name-
less heroes, should accomplish its high destiny as soon as it was
allowed to apply in peace the energy that moved it in war.

And thus we see that as soon as this invaluable advantage of
peace has been established and government representation nor-
malized in the State, government, fulfilling one of its first and
most necessary duties, becomes an educator, wishing that the
large and desirable population attracted to Monterey on account
of the industries of the city should not make merely a short
stay in this favored land, but that willingly they should decide to
leave their bones among us in return for the generosity their
activity, their work, and their talent has prompted. So the city
provides intelligently and generously for instruction to their
children in primary, secondary, and high schools, so that without
the inconvenience that their absence in quest of instruction
would cause to their families, and especially to the mothers,
children may be educated here at home. Thus, here at home,
they may get practical knowledge and become wise, if they wish
it, at the side of their parents, with the generation to which
they belong, a part of the society in which they live, if they de-
cide to adopt altogether this hospitable home, which is willing to
receive them with all the motherly love she bears to her own
sons, recognizing their merits, without distinction between her
own and her adopted children.

Finally, gentlemen, now that I have the great satisfaction of
seeing around me the most prominent business men of this na-
tion, as well as those of foreign countries, and government officers
who, uniting their manly and intelligent action, have elevated
Monterey to the height of which she is rightly proud — now that
I have the pleasure of breaking bread with them at the same
table and toasting with them their well-deserved prosperity, I am
pleased to be able to say to them in accordance with a con-
science which has never deceived me : <( You who toil for the
progress of Nuevo Leon, natives and foreigners — you are worthy
of this Republic whose national wealth and habits of industry
you have cultivated and increased with your own well-earned
private wealth ! "

As for the governor, who inspires, encourages, and represents
the administrative staff, I shall remind him that eighteen years
ago, in promoting him from colonel to brigadier- general in

PORFIRIO DIAZ 1835

reward of a very distinguished service, I said to him : <( This is the
way the weapons with which the country honors us ought to be
used. This is the way a dutiful and honorable soldier fulfills his
promise to defend his flag." And now, after eighteen years, and
after having studied carefully the great advantages that under
his intelligent and firm government this brave and intelligent
State has attained, I consider it just to say to you, condensing all
the praises with which his deeds have inspired me : <( General
Reyes, this is the way to govern; this is the way to respond to
the sovereign will of the people. w

Gentlemen, I drink to the increasing prosperity of Nuevo
Leon and to the well-deserved honor it bestows on its authors.

i836

MAHLON DICKERSON

(1769-1853)

[ATTHEW LYON, the Member of Congress whose vote made
Thomas Jefferson President, had been prosecuted under
the Sedition Law passed during the administration of John
Adams. After his retirement from Congress he presented a petition,
setting forth that the law under which he had been fined was un-
constitutional, and asking to have the money returned to him. This
put Congress in the position of reviewing the action of the federal
courts. The case was a very celebrated one, as it involved not only
this principle, but a leading point in the <( practical politics w of the
great political revolution of 1800. The claim remained before Con-
gress until 1840, when the sum of $1,060.90, with interest from 1799,
was ordered paid as compensation for the enforcement of an uncon-
stitutional act. When the case was before the Senate in 1821,
Mahlon Dickerson, of New Jersey, urged the claims of Lyon very
strongly. Senator Dickerson, who was born in New Jersey in 1769,
was long one of its leading public men. He was judge of its
Supreme Court and governor before his election to the United States
Senate (1817). He was Secretary of the Navy in the Cabinets of Jack-
son and Van Buren. He died in Morris County, New Jersey, October
5th, 1853.

THE ALIEN AND SEDITION ACTS OF THE ADAMS
ADMINISTRATION

(From the Speech in the Case of Matthew Lyon, United States Senate,
January igth, 1821)

I HAVE never doubted that the Sedition Act, so far as it respects
the printing and publishing of libels, was a direct, open, and
unequivocal breach of the Constitution. And, although I do
not hold the United States responsible for all the losses sustained
under that act, I would not willingly retain in our Treasury a
single dollar of the money iniquitously acquired under it. The
whole forms but a small sum, but if it were large, it should be
returned to those from whom it was taken. I should not stop to
inquire whether it were a thousand or a hundred thousand dollars.

MAHLON DICKERSON

'837

To ascertain how far this act was an abridgment of the lib-
erty of the press, let us examine a little further into its practical
operation. It is unnecessary to add anything to what has already
been said upon the trial of Matthew Lyon. The trial of Thomas
Cooper in 1800, in the Circuit Court of the United States, for the
Pennsylvania District, will furnish a complete illustration of the
views of those who made and of those who administered this
law.

I select this case because I was a witness of the whole trial;
a trial which, at the time, filled my mind with horror and indig-
nation. I saw a man whom it was my pride then, as it is now,
to call my friend; a man of the most honorable feelings; a man
whose name is identified with science and literature; the con-
stant study of whose life it has been to render himself useful to
his fellow-beings; I saw this man dragged before a criminal
court, arraigned, tried, and punished, for publishing words which
nothing but the violence and blindness of party rage could have
construed into crime. In the year '97 Mr. Cooper had asked of
the President, Mr. Adams, to be appointed an agent for Ameri-
can claims; the request was made through Doctor Priestly directly
to Mr. Adams, with a frankness warranted on the part of the
Doctor by the intimacy which had long existed between them.
As the application was thus personal, it was supposed to be
confidential. It was unsuccessful, and there it should have rested.
But, by some means never explained, two years afterwards this
application was made public, and afforded the editor of a paper
in Reading an opportunity of inserting a scurrilous paragraph
against Mr. Cooper. Irritated at being thus held up as a subject
of ridicule, Mr. Cooper, in justification of his own conduct, pub-
lished the address for which he was indicted. The words con-
tained in the indictment, stripped of the innuendoes, are the fol-
lowing : —

(< Nor do I see any impropriety in making this request of Mr.
Adams; at that time he had just entered into office; he was hardly
in the infancy of political mistake; even those who doubted of his
capacity, thought well of his intentions. Nor were we yet saddled
with the expense of a permanent navy, or threatened, under his
auspices, with the existence of a standing army. Our credit was not
yet reduced quite so low as to borrow money at eight per cent, in time
of peace, while the unnecessary violence of official expressions might
justly have provoked a war. Mr. Adams had not yet projected his

MAHLON DICKERSON

embassies to Prussia, Russia, and the Sublime Porte, nor had he yet
interfered, as President of the United States, to influence the decisions
of a court of justice, — a stretch of authority which the monarch of
Great Britain would, have shrunk from ; an interference without prec-
edent, against law, and against mercy! The melancholy case of
Jonathan Robbins, a native citizen of America, forcibly impressed by
the British, and delivered up, with the advice of Mr. Adams, to the
mock trial of a British court-martial, had not yet astonished the Re-
publican citizens of this free country; a case too little known, but
which the people ought to be fully apprised of before the election,
and they shall be.M

I have the highest veneration for the exalted statesman and
revolutionary patriot against whom this censure was leveled; but
he was not infallible — much less so were those around him, by
whose advice, at this particular period, he was too much influ-
enced. But, however exalted his station, he had accepted it
with a full knowledge that it was the disposition and practice,
and a salutary one, too, in this country, to examine and censure,
with great freedom, the conduct of those in power. To be cen-
sured freely, and sometimes unjustly, is a tax which every one
must pay who holds the highest station in our Government.
Laws which should completely prevent this would as completely
prostrate the liberties of the people.

However much Mr. Adams might have been hurt at the
asperity of the language applied to him, I am confident he
never intimated a wish in favor of a prosecution. Most probably
this took place in consequence of the advice of those who ad-
vised that Robbins should be given up. About this time Mr.
Adams thought proper to repress the zeal of his political friends
by pardoning Fries, who had been guilty of a misdemeanor, but
was convicted of treason, and by other acts evincing a disposition
to pursue a more moderate system than that which had prevailed
for two preceding years. It will also be remembered that not
long after this period he dismissed some of his advisers, in whom
he had probably placed too much confidence.

At the present time of good feelings it seems incredible that
what Mr. Cooper said of the expenses of a permanent navy, — of
the standing army, — the eight per cent, loan, and the projected
embassies to Prussia, Russia, ana the Sublime Porte, should have
been considered as the subject of indictment. What was said as
to the case of Jonathan Robbins, otherwise called Thomas Nash,

MAHLON DICKERSON

1839

was of a more serious character, and should have been answered,
if it could have been answered, by a true history of that trans-
action— not by punishing Mr. Cooper; for, if this interference
on the part of the President were without precedent against law
and against mercy, fining and imprisoning Mr. Cooper could not
make it otherwise.

The friends of the Sedition Act say that Congress were author-
ized to pass it as a law necessary and proper for carrying into
effect the powers vested by the Constitution in the Government,
under the eighth section of the first article of the Constitution.

This part of the Constitution is very elastic, and some gentle-
man discovered that under it Congress may do what they please,
by simply making the word "necessary* mean (< convenient. w But
I cannot imagine what power vested by the Constitution in the
Government it was necessary to carry into effect by the Sedition
Act. That no such necessity as is alleged did exist is evident
from this circumstance, that the Government went on very well
before that act passed, and quite as well since it has expired.
However convenient, therefore, the law might have been, it cer-
tainly was not necessary. If it were necessary in the meaning of
the Constitution, it was indispensably necessary — not partly nec-
essary. If necessary then it must be necessary now, and Con-
gress must, of course, be neglecting their duty in not reviving
that law.

We are now in effect to declare this act to have been consti-
tutional or unconstitutional. If we do the latter we correct not
the errors of the court but of Congress. If the law was not con-
stitutional when passed, the decisions of the court could not
make it so. Probably the court did not think that a question
for them to decide. The act was a legislative construction of the
Constitution expressly. It was opposed and supported on consti-
tutional grounds, and is a declaration of the three branches of
the legislature of the meaning of the Constitution in this par-
ticular. And it is not yet ascertained that, in construing the
Constitution, Congress is subordinate to the judiciary. Probably
the first decisive experiment upon this subject will prove the
contrary.

I do not think it necessary to search for precedents to justify
us in the measure now proposed. If we have no precedent let
us make one that may be a memento to dominant parties not to
abuse their power. But if precedents were necessary we may

1840

MAHLON DICKERSON

find enough in the history of England, not in that of our own
country; for, fortunately for us, our history affords but a few in-
stances of the abuse of power. For such precedents we need
not go back to the heavy time of York and Lancaster, when the
triumphant party constantly reversed all that had been done by
the party subdued. We may look into a later period when the
Stuarts and their immediate successors were upon the throne,
when the principles of liberty were much better understood than
practiced.

The attainder of the Earl of Stafford, who had been treacher-
ously given up by a cowardly king to the indignation of Parlia-
ment, was reversed.

The attainders against Algernon Sidney and against Lord
Russell were reversed.

The attainder against Alderman Cornish was reversed, as also
that against Lady Lisle and many others. In these cases it is
true the Parliament only reversed their own proceedings. But
they sometimes reversed the proceedings of other courts, as in
the case of Bastwick, Burton, and Prynne, who were tried in the
court of Star Chamber for libels, and sentenced to lose their ears,
to pay a fine of five thousand pounds each and to be imprisoned
for life. This is a very strong case, and in point; for the Parlia-
ment not only reversed the sentence, but remitted the fine, and
ordered satisfaction for damages to the parties injured.

I must ask the indulgence of the Senate while I read a few
passages from the proceedings in this extraordinary case. I shall
read them for the edification of those who are, who have been,
or who hereafter may be, in favor of a Sedition Act.

Dr. Bastwick, Mr. Burton, and Mr. Prynne had written some
religious books, in which were contained some reflections on the
Bishops, which were deemed libelous. Mr. Prynne, three years
before this time, had written a book in which he censured stage
plays, music, and dancing, for which he was punished by the loss
of his ears. Between eight and nine o'clock in the morning, the
fourteenth of June [1637], the lords being set in their places, in
the said court of Star Chamber, and casting their eyes at the
prisoners, then at the bar, Sir John Finch, Chief- Justice of the
Commons Pleas, began to speak after this manner: —

I had thought Mr. Prynne had no ears, but methinks he hath
ears; which caused many of the lords to take a stricter view of him;

'MAHLON DICKERSON ,841

and, for their better satisfaction, the usher of the court was com-
manded to turn up his hair and show his ears; upon the sight
whereof, the lords were displeased that they had been formerly no
more cut off, and cast out some disgraceful words of him.

To which Mr. Prynne replied, " My lords, there is never a one of
your honors but would be sorry to have your ears as mine are.w

The lord keeper replied again, <(In good faith, he is somewhat
saucy. "

WI hope," said Mr. Prynne, "your honors will not be offended; I
pray God to give you ears to hear.*

<( The business of the day, * said the lord keeper, <( is to proceed
on the prisoner at the bar.w

Mr. Prynne then humbly desired the court to give him leave to
make a motion or two; which being granted, he moves: —

First, that their honors would be pleased to accept of a cross-bill
against the prelates, signed with their own hands, being that which
stands with the justice of the court, which he humbly craved, and so
tendered it.

Lord Keeper — As for your cross-bill, it is not the business of the
day; hereafter if the court should see just cause, and that it savor
not of libeling, we may accept of it; for my part I have not seen
it, but have heard somewhat of it.

Mr. Prynne — I hope your honors will not refuse it, being, as it is,
on his Majesty's behalf. We are his Majesty's subjects, and there-
fore require the justice of the court.

Lord Keeper — But this is not the business of the day.

Mr. Prynne — Why then, my lords, I have a second motion,
which I humbly pray your honors to grant, which is, that your lord-
ships will please to dismiss the prelates, here now sitting, from hav-
ing any voice in the censure of this cause, being generally known to
be adversaries, as being no way agreeable with equity or reason,
that they who are our adversaries should be our judges; therefore I
humbly crave they may be expunged out of the court.

Lord Keeper — In good faith it is a sweet motion; is it not?
Herein you are become libelous; and if you should thus libel all
the lords and reverend judges as you do the reverend prelates, by
this your plea, you would have none to pass sentence upon you for
your libeling, because they are parties.

The whole trial is very interesting. I proceed to the sen-
tence.

Thus, the prisoners, desiring to speak a little more for them-
selves, were commanded to silence. And so the lords proceed to
censure.

v — 116

1842

MAHLON DICKERSON

The Lord Cettington's censure: <(I condemn these three men to
lose their ears in the palace yard at Westminster, to be fined five
thousand pounds a man to his Majesty, and to perpetual imprison-
ment in three remote places in the kingdom, namely, the castles of
Caernarvon, Cornwall, and Lancaster.8

The Lord Finch added to this censure: —

«Mr. Prynne to be stigmatized in the cheeks with two letters,
S and L, for seditious libeler.* To which all the lords agreed.

I omit what is said of the punishment of Dr. Bastwick and
Mr. Burton, which was inflicted with great cruelty, but that of
Mr. Prynne deserves a particular notice: —

Now, the executioner being come to sear him and cut off his ears,
Mr. Prynne said these words to him: "Come, friend, come burn me,
cut me; I fear not; I have learned to fear the fire of hell, and not
what man can do unto me. Come, sear me, sear me; I shall bear
in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus"; which the bloody execu-
tioner performed with extraordinary cruelty, heating his iron twice
to burn one cheek, and cut one of his ears so close that he cut off a
piece of his cheek. At which exquisite torture he never moved with
his body, or as much as changed his countenance, but still looked up
as well as he could towards Heaven, with a smiling countenance,
even to the astonishment of all the beholders, and uttering, as soon
as the executioner had done, this heavenly sentence: (<The more I
am beaten down, the more I am lift up.*

What protection was afforded to these wretched men by the
common law, the law in which they lived and moved and had
their being ?

The honorable gentleman from Georgia admonishes us not to
destroy the independence of the judiciary, the bulwark of the
liberties of the people. We shall not, in the measure now pro-
posed, in the slightest degree interfere with the independence
of the judiciary. It must be a matter of indifference to them
what we do with the Sedition Act; it cannot affect their emolu-
ments. I have understood that the independency of the judiciary
was regulated by the greater or less permanency in the tenure
of their office, and the greater or less certainty in the payment
of their fixed salaries.

But I must beg leave to differ from the honorable gentleman
when he informs us that our independent judiciary is the bul-
wark of the liberties of the people. By which he must mean,

MAIILON DICKERSON

1843

defenders of the people against the oppressions of the Govern-
ment. From what I witnessed in the years 1798, 1799, and
1800, I never shall, I never can, consider our judiciary as the
bulwark of the liberties of the people. The people must look
out for other bulwarks for their liberties. I have the most pro-
found respect for the learning, talents, and integrity of the
honorable judges who fill our Federal bench. But, if those who
carried into effect the Sedition Act are to be called the people's
defenders, it must be for nearly the same reason that the Fates
were called Parcce — quia non parcebant.

1 844

DANIEL S. DICKINSON

(1800-1866)

DANIEL S. DICKINSON represented New York in the United States
Senate from 1844 to 1851, and during the great debates over
the slavery question he made a number of speeches against
Sectionalism, which gave him a national reputation and great popu-
larity as an orator. Extracts from his orations in favor of the Union
were published in the school speakers and often declaimed by the
young orators of his generation. He was born in Connecticut, Sep-
tember nth, 1800, but his family removed to New York when he
was only six years old, and as a result of his own efforts in educat-
ing himself and pushing himself at the bar, he rose to eminence both
as a lawyer and a public man. He retired from politics after leav-
ing the Senate. In 1861, however, he made a number of speeches
in favor of maintaining the Union at any cost, and in 1864 he was
a delegate to the Baltimore convention.

REBUKING SENATOR CLEMENS OF ALABAMA
(From a Speech in the United States Senate, January i2th, 1850)

I AM for maintaining the Union in spirit as well as in form;
and I have deprecated the assaults which I have seen made
upon the Constitution occasionally in the nonslaveholding
States, in the refusal to deliver fugitives from service according
to a solemn provision of that instrument. But this, sir, I look
upon as a matter which must be reformed at home, as it will be
by a sound and healthy public opinion, when it shall set a just
estimate upon the interference of political agitators, and con-
demn a morality that is purer than the fundamental law. But I
will not even dwell upon the alleged errors of any section of my
country. If she has ever been astray, rather than contemplate
it, I would, like the son of the erring patriarch, walk backward
and cast the mantle of concealment over it. I desire to preserve
in all its vigor the glorious inheritance which our fathers gave
us; to see the South secure in the full possession and enjoyment

DANIEL S. DICKINSON

1845

of their constitutional rights. I have stood by them when I
thought them right, regardless of peril, and will now aid in
shielding them from unjust and improper aggressions upon their
institutions. In this struggle numerically they are the weaker
party, and when I have seen them unjustly assaulted and as-
sailed, my sympathies have been with them, and I have exposed
and denounced not only the sectional agitators, but have warned
those against excitement whose views and intentions are just, but
who have been provoked to retaliation by just such wholesale
sectional assaults as are now heaped upon the North by the Sen-
ator from Alabama [Mr. Clemens]. Sir, crimination begets re-
crimination; and although men may put on the garb of philoso-
phy for an occasion, they are yet liable to be betrayed by
impulse and excitement; and when they hear distinguished
Southern men day after day making sectional appeals, grouping
all together and condemning all in gross, without stint or excep-
tion, they in their turn will make other declarations, and thus
the work goes on. One sectional agitator begets another — a
blow given brings a blow in return, and thus sectional agitation
makes the meat it feeds on. I have already said I regretted
that this subject has been introduced. Allow me to say that I
do not regret that it is about to reach its culminating point. I
care not how soon this may be the case. I believe that the
great mass of the people of the South are honest, just, and
generous, and that all they desire is to remain secure in the
possession of their rights. I believe, too, sir, that the great
mass of the people of the North are equally just and equally
generous, and true to the Constitution, and that they too desire
nothing more than what they deem to be their rights, and the
rights of the whole people, and best calculated to advance the
honor of the Confederacy and the interest and happiness of
mankind. When reviled, I will not revile again. I will by no
means repudiate the Southern Democracy. They have too often
proved themselves worthy of the name they bear. Nor, sir,
upon the question of this Union, much and radically as I differ
with them upon other questions, will I repudiate the patriotic
among our opponents. This question shoots too deep and
stretches too high to be measured by political parties; and
when the day of trial comes, if come it does, every patriotic
man will breast himself for the shock, and sectional agitators
will be foiled. The Constitution throws its broad aegis over this

1846

DANIEL S. DICKINSON

mighty Republic, and its people worship at its shrine with more
than an Eastern devotion. They have contemplated the priceless
value of the Union. They have thought of the blood and tears
by which it was purchased. They see the proud vessel bearing
majestically onward, and they exclaim in the language of the
poet : —

«Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State!
Sail on, O UNION, strong and great!
Humanity with all its fears,
With all the hope of future years,
Is hanging breathless on thy fate!
We know what master laid thy keel,
What workmen wrought thy ribs of steel,
Who made each mast, and sail, and rope,
What anvils rang, what hammers beat,
In what a forge and what a heat
Were shaped the anchors of thy hope!*

They will cheer on this noble ship; they will stand by this
Constitution; they will adhere to this Union; and although the
Northern people are opposed to the institution of slavery, the
great mass of them have no intention or disposition to trench
improperly upon the constitutional rights of the South; and this
they will prove, should the occasion arise, even though they
should sell their lives in her defense. Sir, if it should come to
the worst, as it never will, so firmly are the Northern people
devoted to the Constitution, that if armed incendiarism, foreign
or domestic, should push her mad crusade against the South,
and she be placed in peril, I am free to declare, I would, and
so I believe would every patriotic man of the free States who
had a sword to draw, draw it in defense of their Southern breth-
ren and of the rights guaranteed to them by a common compact,
and stand by them to the death. But, sir, they will only stand
by her when she is right; and so long as she is so, no sword
will be called into requisition, except against a foreign and a
common foe. The very heat, natural and artificial, to which
sectional agitation has attained, will work its own cure. It will
burn itself out. Northern agitators and Southern agitators will
find themselves side by side in their errand of mutual mischief,
and the great mass of the American people will look upon this

DANIEL S. DICKINSON

1847

Union as it is, and upon Southern rights and Northern rights as
they are, and will stand by them and protect them.

These territorial questions, this District of Columbia question,
the question of jurisdiction in forts and dock yards, arsenals and
navy yards, and so forth, are mostly questions temporary in their
character, and, together with the question of fugitives from
service, would be soon settled by the good sense of the right-
minded, were it not for the wholesale denunciations of men
grouped together in whole communities and States, on one hand
denouncing the North, the North, the North, and on the other
hand the South, the South, the South. This provokes the greater
part of this struggle; and I would suggest whether it would not
be more wise if gentlemen would exercise a little forbearance,
always remembering the saying, (< Let him that is without sin
cast the first stone. " I am willing to admit that the great mass
of our Southern friends treat this question as it should be treated ;
and I am pleased to see them stand up boldly as they do for
their right of being let alone. I am gratified to hear them, in a
proper spirit, stand by their institutions and defend them, for it
serves to show, what some seem practically to forget, that this
Confederacy is a sisterhood of free and independent States asso-
ciated for a few common purposes, and not a consolidated Federal
Government. The North and the South stand together upon one
great constitutional platform, and neither has a right to claim
superiority over the other. The people of the South have insti-
tutions that are sensitive and that can be endangered by agita-
tion in the North, and in opposing such agitation I have been
willing to throw myself into the breach to turn it aside. I have
attempted to call the attention of the Northern people — nay, of
the whole American people — to the danger of agitating this
question, and I would say in all kindness to my friend from
Alabama that he gives more food in one speech for the nourish-
ment of the Abolition movement than all the Garrisons, Wendell
Phillipses, and Abby Folsoms, and all the speeches of all the
* Free Soil ® agitators and abolition demagogues put together.
He does more to provoke assaults upon the institutions of the
South than all that Abolitionism has ever been able to accomplish
in the hour of its most fiendish triumphs. I beg of that honor-
able Senator when he has anything to say hereafter — unless he is
impelled by a strong sense of duty — that he will not attempt to
foment and carry on this sectional agitation. To what end and

!848 DANIEL S. DICKINSON

to whose good will result the dissolution of this Union, from the
contemplation of which every patriotic mind instinctively recoils
with horror?

I sing no hosannas to a Union without a constitution. I ad-
mit that when the life and spirit have departed, the framework
will be valueless and will tumble to decay. But the spirit has
not yet departed — the life is not yet gone. It is true it has
received many assaults, but it is capable of receiving and sus-
taining many. more. Let those who are disposed to indulge in
agitation ask for the rights guaranteed by the Constitution only;
but when they ask for these let them not ask for what the Con-
stitution does not guarantee. Let them not provoke assaults
themselves, while decrying the assaults they invite.

The honorable Senator from Alabama repudiates and casts off
the Northern Democracy. They will, however, do no such thing
with him. They will retain him in full membership, but en-
deavor to teach him some instructive and useful lessons. And
upon this subject of reading out the entire Democracy of fifteen
States of this Union, they will request my young friend from
Alabama to tarry a while at Jericho until his beard shall have
grown. [Laughter.]

1 849

JOHN DICKINSON

(1732-1808)

|OHN DICKINSON, of Pennsylvania, was the author of the dec-
laration on Taking Up Arms,* read in the Continental Con-
gress in June 1775, and adopted July 6th of the same year.
A year later he opposed the Declaration of Independence as prema-
ture, but he vindicated his patriotism by enlisting as a private soldier
and marching against the British forces in New Jersey. He was a
member of the Colonial Congress of 1765; of the Continental Con-
gress of 1774; and from 1782 to 1785 he was President of Pennsyl-
vania. He was a member of the Constitutional Convention of 1787,
elected as a delegate from Delaware. Born in Maryland, November
i3th, 1732, he died in Delaware, February i4th, 1808.

THE DECLARATION ON TAKING UP ARMS
(Read Before Congress on the Sixth of July, 1775)

IF IT were possible for men who exercise their reason to believe
that the Divine Author of our existence intended a part of
the human race to hold an absolute property in and an un-
bounded power over others, marked out by his infinite goodness
and wisdom as the objects of a legal domination never rightfully
resistible, however severe and oppressive, the inhabitants of these
colonies might at least require from the Parliament of Great
Britain some evidence that this dreadful authority has been
granted to that body. But a reverence for our great Creator,
principles of humanity, and the dictates of common sense must
convince all those who reflect upon the subject, that government
was instituted to promote the welfare of mankind, and ought to
be administered for the attainment of that end. The legislature
of Great Britain, however, stimulated by an inordinate passion
for a power, not only unjustifiable, but which they know to be
peculiarly reprobated by the very constitution of that kingdom,
and desperate of success in any mode of contest where regard
should be had to truth, law, or right, have at length, deserting

jgqo JOHN DICKINSON

those, attempted to effect their cruel and impolitic purpose of
enslaving these colonies by violence, and have thereby rendered
it necessary for us to close with their last appeal from reason to
arms. Yet, however blinded that assembly may be, by their in-
temperate rage for unlimited domination, so to slight justice and
the opinion of mankind, we esteem ourselves bound by obliga-
tions of respect to the rest of the world, to make known the
justice of our cause.

Our forefathers, inhabitants of the island of Great Britain, left
their native land to seek on these shores a residence for civil
and religious freedom. At the expense of their blood; at the
hazard of their fortunes; without the least charge to the country
from which they removed; by unceasing labor and an unconquer-
able spirit, they effected settlements in the distant and inhospit-
able wilds of America, then filled with numerous and warlike
nations of barbarians. Societies or governments, vested with
perfect legislatures, were formed under charters from the Crown,
and a harmonious intercourse was established between the colo-
nies and the kingdom from which they derived their origin.
The mutual benefits of this union became in a short time so
extraordinary as to excite astonishment. It is universally con-
fessed that the amazing increase of the wealth, strength, and
navigation of the realm arose from this source; and the minister
who so wisely and successfully directed the measures of Great
Britain in the late war, publicly declared that these colonies en-
abled her to triumph over her enemies. Towards the conclusion
of that war, it pleased our sovereign to make a change in his
counsels. From that fatal moment, the affairs of the British
Empire began to fall into confusion, and gradually sliding from
the summit of glorious prosperity, to which they had been ad-
vanced by the virtues and abilities of one man, are at length
distracted by the convulsions that now shake its deepest founda-
tions. The new ministry finding the brave foes of Britain, though
frequently defeated, yet still contending, took up the unfortunate
idea of granting them a hasty peace and of then subduing her
faithful friends.

These devoted colonies were judged to be in such a state as
to present victories without bloodshed, and all the easy emolu-
ments of statutable plunder. The uninterrupted tenor of their
peaceable and respectful behavior from the beginning of coloniza-
tion; their dutiful, zealous, and useful services during the war,

JOHN DICKINSON r85i

though so recently and amply acknowledged in the most honor-
able manner by his Majesty, by the late King and by Parlia-
ment, could not save them from the meditated innovations.
Parliament was influenced to adopt the pernicious project, and,
assuming a new power over them, has, in the course of eleven
years, given such decisive specimens of the spirit and conse-
quences attending this power, as to leave no doubt concerning
the effects of acquiescence under it. They have undertaken to
give and grant our money without our consent, though we have
ever exercised an exclusive right to dispose of our own property;
statutes have been passed for extending the jurisdiction of courts
of admiralty and vice-admiralty beyond their ancient limits; for
depriving us of the accustomed and inestimable privilege of trial
by jury in cases affecting both life and property; for suspending
the legislature of one of the colonies; for interdicting all com-
merce to the capital of another, and for altering fundamentally
the form of government established by charter and secured by
acts of its own legislature, solemnly confirmed by the Crown; for
exempting the (< murderers }> of colonists from legal trial, and, in
effect, from punishment; for erecting in a neighboring province,
acquired by the joint arms of Great Britain and America, a des-
potism dangerous to our very existence, and for quartering sol-
diers upon the colonists in time of profound peace. It has also
been resolved in Parliament that colonists charged with commit-
ting certain offenses shall be transported to England to be tried.

But why should we enumerate our injuries in detail ? By one
statute it is declared that Parliament can, w of right, make laws to
bind us in all cases whatsoever." What is to defend us against
so enormous, so unlimited a power ? Not a single man of those
who assume it is chosen by us, or is subject to our control or
influence; but, on the contrary, they are all of them exempt from
the operation of such laws, and an American revenue, if not di-
verted from the ostensible purposes for which it is raised, would
actually lighten their own burdens, in proportion as they increase
ours. We saw the misery to which such despotism would reduce
us. We, for ten years, incessantly and ineffectually besieged the
throne as supplicants; we reasoned, we remonstrated with Parlia-
ment in the most mild and decent language.

The Administration, sensible that we should regard these oppres-
sive measures as freemen ought to do, sent over fleets and armies
to enforce them. The indignation of the Americans was roused,

!852 JOHN DICKINSON

it is true, but it was the indignation of a virtuous, loyal, and affec-
tionate people. A congress of delegates from the united colonies
was assembled at Philadelphia, on the fifth day of last Sep-
tember. We resolved again to offer an humble and dutiful peti-
tion to the King, and also addressed our fellow-subjects of Great
Britain. We have pursued every temperate, every respectful
measure; we have even proceeded to break off our commercial
intercourse with our fellow-subjects, as the last peaceable admo-
nition that our attachment to no nation upon earth should sup-
plant our attachment to liberty. This, we nattered ourselves,
was the ultimate step of the controversy, but subsequent events
have shown how vain was this hope of finding moderation in our
enemies.

Several threatening expressions against the colonies were in-
serted in his Majesty's speech; our petition, though we were told
it was a decent one, and that his Majesty had been pleased to
receive it graciously, and to promise laying it before his Parlia-
ment, was huddled into both houses, among a bundle of Ameri-
can papers, and there neglected. The Lords and Commons in
their address, in the month of February, said that wa rebellion
at that time actually existed within the province of Massachu-
setts Bay, and that those concerned in it had been countenanced
and encouraged by unlawful combinations and engagements, en-
tered into by his Majesty's subjects in several of the other colo-
nies; and, therefore, they besought his Majesty that he would
take the most effectual measures to enforce due obedience to the
laws and authority of the supreme legislature. w Soon after, the
commercial intercourse of whole colonies with foreign countries
and with each other was cut off by an act of Parliament; by an-
other, several of them were entirely prohibited from the fisheries
in the seas near their coasts, on which they always depended for
their subsistence, and large re-enforcements of ships and troops
were immediately sent over to General Gage.

Fruitless were all the entreaties, arguments, and eloquence of
an illustrious band of the most distinguished peers and common-
ers, who nobly and strenuously asserted the justice of our cause,
to stay, or even to mitigate the heedless fury with which these
accumulated and unexampled outrages were hurried on. Equally
fruitless was the interference of the city of London, of Bristol,
and many other respectable towns, in our favor. Parliament
adopted an insidious manoeuvre, calculated to divide us, to estab-

JOHN DICKINSON ,853

lish a perpetual auction of taxations, where colony should bid
against colony, all of them uninformed what ransom would re-
deem their lives, and thus to extort from us, at the point of the
bayonet, the unknown sums that should be sufficient to gratify,
if possible to gratify, ministerial rapacity, with the miserable in-
dulgence left to us of raising, in our own mode, the prescribed
tribute. What terms more rigid and humiliating could have been
dictated by remorseless victors to conquered enemies ? In our
circumstances, to accept them would be to deserve them.

Soon after the intelligence of these proceedings arrived on
this continent, General Gage, who, in the course of the last year,
had taken possession of the town of Boston, in the province of
Massachusetts Bay, and still occupied it as a garrison, on the
nineteenth day of April sent out from that place a large detach-
ment of his army, who made an unprovoked assault on the in-
habitants of the said province at the town of Lexington, and as
appears by the affidavits of a great number of persons, some of
whom were officers and soldiers of that detachment, murdered
eight of the inhabitants, and wounded many others. From thence
the troops proceeded, in warlike array, to the town of Concord,
where they set upon another party of the inhabitants of the
same province, killing several and wounding more, until, com-
pelled to retreat by the country people, suddenly assembled to
repel this cruel aggression. Hostilities, thus commenced by the
British troops, have been since prosecuted by them, without re-
gard to faith or reputation. The inhabitants of Boston being
confined within that town by the general, their governor, and
having, in order to procure their dismission, entered into a treaty
with him, it was stipulated that the said inhabitants having de-
posited their arms with their own magistrates, should have lib-
erty to depart, taking with them their other effects. They
accordingly delivered up their arms, but in open violation of
honor, in defiance of the obligation of treaties, which even
savage nations esteem sacred, the governor ordered the arms
deposited as aforesaid, that they might be preserved for their
owners, to be seized by a body of soldiers, detained the greatest
part of the inhabitants in the town, and compelled the few who
were permitted to retire, to leave their most valuable effects be-
hind.

By this perfidy, wives are separated from their husbands,
children from their parents, the aged and the sick from their

JOHN DICKINSON

relations and friends, who wish to attend and comfort them, and
those who have been used to live in plenty, and even elegance,
are reduced to deplorable distress.

The general, further emulating his ministerial masters, by a
proclamation bearing date on the twelfth day of June, after vent-
ing the grossest falsehoods and calumnies against the good peo-
ple of these colonies, proceeds to <( declare them all, either by
name or description, to be rebels and traitors, to supersede the
course of common law, and instead thereof to publish and order
the use and exercise of the law martial.8 His troops have
butchered our countrymen; have wantonly burnt Charlestown,
besides a considerable number of houses in other places; our
ships and vessels are seized; the necessary supplies of provisions
are intercepted; and he is exerting his utmost power to spread
destruction and devastation around him.

We have received certain intelligence that General Carleton,
the Governor of Canada, is instigating the people of that pro-
vince, and the Indians, to fall upon us; and we have but too
much reason to apprehend that schemes have been formed to
excite domestic enemies against us. In brief, a part of these
colonies now feel, and all of them are sure of feeling, as far as
the vengeance of administration can inflict them, the complicated
calamities of fire, sword, and famine. We are reduced to the al-
ternative of choosing an unconditional submission to the tyranny
of irritated ministers, or resistance by force. The latter is our
choice. We have counted the cost of this contest, and find nothing
so dreadful as voluntary slavery! Honor, justice, and humanity
forbid us tamely to surrender that freedom which we received from
our gallant ancestors, and which our innocent posterity have a
right to receive from us. We cannot endure the infamy and
guilt of resigning succeeding generations to that wretchedness
which inevitably awaits them, if we basely entail hereditary
bondage upon them.

Our cause is just. Our union is perfect. Our internal re-
sources are great, and, if necessary, foreign assistance is un-
doubtedly attainable. We gratefully acknowledge, as signal
instances of Divine favor towards us, that his providence would
not permit us to be called into this severe controversy, until we
were grown up to our present strength, had been previously exer-
cised in warlike operations, and possessed the means of defending
ourselves. With hearts fortified by these animating reflections, we

JOHN DICKINSON ^55

most solemnly, before God and the world, declare that, exerting
the utmost energy of those powers which our beneficent Creator
has graciously bestowed upon us, the arms we have been com-
pelled by our enemies to assume, we will, in defiance of every
hazard, with unabating firmness and perseverance, employ for the
preservation of our liberties, — being with one mind resolved to
die freemen rather than to live slaves.

Lest this declaration should disquiet the minds of our friends
and fellow-subjects in any part of the empire, we assure them
that we mean not to dissolve that union which has so long and
so happily subsisted between us, and which we sincerely wish to
see restored. Necessity has not yet driven us into that desperate
measure, or induced us to excite any other nation to war against
them. We have not raised armies with ambitious designs of sep-
arating from Great Britain and establishing independent States.
We fight not for glory or for conquest. We exhibit to mankind
the remarkable spectacle of a people attacked by unprovoked en-
emies, without any imputation or even suspicion of offense. They
boast of their privileges and civilization, and yet proffer no
milder conditions than servitude or death.

In our own native land, in defense of the freedom that is our
birthright, and which we ever enjoyed till the late violation of
it — for the protection of our property, acquired solely by the
honest industry of our forefathers and ourselves, against violence
actually offered, we have taken up arms. We shall lay them
down when hostilities shall cease on the part of the aggressors,
and all danger of their being renewed shall be removed, and not
before.

With an humble confidence in the mercies of the Supreme
and impartial Judge and Ruler of the universe, we most devoutly
implore his divine goodness to protect us happily through this
great conflict, to dispose our adversaries to reconciliation on rea-
sonable terms, and thereby to relieve the empire from the cal-
amities of civil war.

i856

PfeRE DIDON

IENRI DIDON, one of the most celebrated thinkers and orators
of contemporary France, stands distinctively for the axiom
that between the different phases of truth there can be no
real conflict. His lifework has been to align the Catholic Church in
France with the modern spirit of experimentalism in science and of
criticism in the investigation of religious records. He was born at
Touvet, March ryth, 1840, and in 1862 identified himself with the
Dominican order. He has described himself as a a spiritual son of
Lacordaire.* Holding that there is nothing in the creed of the
Church opposed to true science, he has also attempted to demonstrate
that the Democratic movement of modern times is the delayed fruit
of Christian teachings. In 1879, he took grounds on the question of
divorce, which his superiors condemned, and was temporarily <{ si-
lenced,* but after his return from Corsica, to which he was retired,
he was restored to favor, and in 1890 became director of the college
of Albert the Great at Arcueil.

CHRIST AND HIGHER CRITICISM

JESUS CHRIST is the greatest name of history. There are others
for which men have died. His is the only one worshiped
among all peoples of all races in all ages.

He who bears it is known of all the earth. Among savages
of the most degenerate tribes of the human species, missionaries
go incessantly to announce his death on the Cross and the sacri-
fice made for the human race which is saved by loving him.
The most indifferent in the modern world have been obliged to
admit that nothing has ever helped the weak and the suffering
more than Christianity.

The most glorious geniuses of the past will be obscured.
Whether in monuments, palaces, obelisks, or tombs; whether in
written encomiums, papyrus or parchment, bricks or medallions, —
only reminiscences of them have been preserved for us. Jesus
will live forever in the conscience of his faithful people. Here

PERE DIDON

1857

in this great manifestation of his power is his indestructible
monument.

The Church founded by him fills with his name all time and
all places. The Church knows him, loves him. adores him! As
he lives in her, so she lives in him. ... In a few simple
words the Church teaches that the greatest event which ever oc-
curred to humanity was the arrival of Christ, and that God loves
man, since God saves him from the penalty of the law; that God
would save him from harm by giving him aid; that charity is
the supreme duty, since by his charity and goodness the Savior
was brought to the Cross; that the Christian must be vigilant in
the good because his Master will be the judge; that he need not
fear death because his Master conquered it and because he him-
self is destined to eternal life.

The man who accepts these instructions and believes in Christ
can walk uprightly in life. He is armed for defense and for
growth. Nothing can arrest his progress. The disciple of Jesus
Christ has become the conqueror of the world — not from the
standpoint of materialism and brutality, for violence is not in the
spirit of the crucified Master, but in the sense of goodness, of
abnegation, of sacrifice, and of moral dignity. In sowing these
virtues as seeds of life, he prepares and enriches the human soil
until it is capable of all culture and of all harvests.

But since believers in their intelligence seek to find reasons for
elementary dogmas, it is necessary that we explain to them, in
the measure of our imperfect and always limited knowledge, the
facts and details of the human and divine life of Jesus, the words
he spoke, the laws he formulated, his manner of teaching, evan-
gelizing, combating, suffering, and dying. The history of Jesus
is the foundation of faith. Evangelical doctrine, moral Chris-
tianity, culture, hierarchy, Church dignities, all rest on him.
Thanks to the work of educated teachers, the doctrine of Jesus,
his moralities, his faith, and his Church, have become little by
little the object of distinct science, perfected, organized, respond-
ing to the legitimate aspirations of believers who would be men
of faith and men of science; equally, the life of Jesus Christ must
in its detail meet the exigencies of history.

The partisans of those called the critical school will say: The

Christ of dogma and of tradition, the Christ of the Apostles and

the evangelists, interpreted according to the doctrines of the

Church, is not and cannot be the Christ of history. This ideal

v — 117

i858

PfiRE DIDON

Christ, God in man, Spirit Incarnate, conceived by an unknown
miracle, calling himself the only Son of God, in the absolute and
metaphysical sense, multiplying miracles, speaking as the fourth
Evangelist makes him speak, rising again three days after death,
ascending to the heavens in the face of his Disciples, after forty
days, — such a man is not real! He exists only in the pious
fancy of his believers who have created him piecemeal. The
true Jesus, the Jesus of history, was born as are all other men;
he lived like them; he did no more miracles than they! He
taught a purer morality, and founded a religion less imperfect
than others. Like all reformers, as a rule, he succumbed to the
jealousies of his contemporaries. Becoming the victim of Jew-
ish hatred and dying as we die, he has neither ascended to
heaven nor is he living with God!

I revolted (pardon the phrase) not only in my Christian faith,
but in my impartiality as a man, at this contradiction. Con-
vinced that Jesus was the invisible God in a human form resem-
bling our own, I, as a historian, regard him as still living, such
as he was in this double nature.

The question of his Divinity has divided the greatest minds
since the advent of Christ, and it will create division to the end.
It is already a strange phenomenon that Jesus alone disposed of
a problem that never sleeps in the consciousness of humanity, —
a problem that always excites the emotions. I shall permit my-
self here to make a simple historical reflection addressed to un-
prejudiced men, to true critics with open minds.

This violent contradiction and contention of which Jesus is
the object was prophesied. It shall last as long as the world; it
afflicts the Christian, but it does not astonish or trouble him;
he sees the signs of his Master. It is the product of living the
life of Christ.

While his Disciples in reply to the question said: <(You are
the Christ, the Son of the living God, >J the Jews said : <( He is but
a prophet*; others, blinder, called him a blasphemer and a con-
spirator.

After he had left the earth and while his Apostles preached
in the Jewish synagogues, the Messiah, God and man, filled with
the wisdom and goodness of God, the first sectaries, the Naza-
renes and Ebionites, would see in him nothing but a man.

The contention on this point continued for centuries. A
Pagan philosopher, Celsus, without denying the miracles of Christ,

P&RE DIDON

1859

ridiculed his doctrines, calling them absurd, and his Cross he
called infamous. Origen refuted him and proclaimed with his
mighty voice the divinity of his master. Since then the ages
have advanced; the Crucified One has grown, destroying pagan-
ism, absorbing philosophy, dethroning empires, conquering the
earth, civilizing the barbarian, creating a new world!

With what reason, then, did the Jews anathematize Jesus and
kill him! Pagans, like Tacitus, Suetonius, and the honest pro-
consul of Bithnyia, Pliny the younger, disdained him, and looked
upon his Disciples as a detestable sect. Philosophers like Celsus,
bore him down with their wisdom, while the Apostles adored in
him the Son of God.

If Jesus was, indeed, but the wretch despised by Jews and
Pagans, how has he carved on earth such a pathway ? How
has he founded a religion that dominates the earth ? Were
he merely human, the achievements would be inexplicable, and
it is the popular proof that Jesus is what the Church affirms
him to be.

We must not confound criticism with history. Though insep-
arable from each other, they must remain distinct. In its general
sense criticism is the exercise of the judgment, a faculty essen-
tial in all reasonable beings. To criticize and to judge are syn-
onomous terms. For judgment as criticism first tries to discern
the true from the false. This is the first right and the most
necessary duty of the mind. Whatever the domain it explores,
religion, philosophy, science, literature, aesthetics, even in mathe-
matics, reason must be attentive to discern the real from the
apparent, the true, sometimes unapparent, from the false which is
frequently most plausible.

Criticism, therefore, cannot be a special science. It is rather
a condition of all science. It enters into the logical rules which
determine how men shall think fairly and judge justly. These
simple considerations demonstrate the vanity of those who would
arrogate a monopoly of criticism. The school of criticism is the
school of all the world. Each has a right to claim and to exer-
cise it. The most ordinary temptation of the cultivated mind is
to desire to criticize too much, to over judge, to criticize even
that of which he knows nothing. The sage moderates this in-
temperance. He learns to judge only what he knows, never
forgetting that his knowledge is limited and his ignorance im-
measurable.

!86o PfiRE DIDON

One may be a good critic in philosophy and a very poor
judge of religion or history. Certain human sciences demand,
not only the speculative mind, but a long experience.

Moral doctrines are much better criticized even by the ignor-
ant who have experimented with virtue than by the skeptic who
doubts the austere joys of sacrifice.

The saints who lived on the word of Jesus will always under-
stand him better than the exacting Pharisees who repelled him
and knew not the Savior. A delicate taste distinguishes shad-
ings which escape the chemist.

As applied to history, the critic has a well-defined duty. The
object of history is to state facts. That is, the facts of the past
being known to us but by documents, and the documents being
the records of witnesses, more or less immediate, to the facts
themselves, the critic should examine the documents, facts, and
witnesses together.

Some facts are absurd; the critic discards them. Some docu-
ments are altered or suspected; the critic notices and amends.
If some witnesses are unworthy of belief, he unmasks and con-
founds them.

In all that concerns the life of Christ, the critic has the right
and the duty to inspect the documents and the witnesses we
adduce. To judge the life, the antiquity, and the authenticity of
one, the value as testimony of the other, they should examine
the nature of the facts in the documents as reported by the wit-
nesses.

i86i

LORD GEORGE DIGBY

(1612-1676)

GEORGE DIGBY, son of John Digby, Earl of Bristol, was
one of the most notable orators of the Parliamentary party
under Charles I., and had he been more thoroughgoing as a
reformer, he might have easily become one of the greatest historical
characters of the period. Clarendon says that he was " of great elo-
quence and becoming in discourse,* but after opposing the attempt
of the King to dispense with Parliament and make himself absolute,
he went over to the court and so virtually disappeared from history.
The occasion of the change was his refusal to join in compassing the
death of Strafford. Appointed one of the committee of impeachment
he made a speech declaring that the House of Commons, without the
lords and the King, had no right to pass a bill of attainder, involv-
ing a death sentence. He advised that the bill be laid aside and
another substituted such as would secure the State from Lord Straf-
ford, <( saving only life.* For this advice he was finally expelled
from Parliament after his speech had been ordered burned by the
hangman. The King made him a baron, and in 1641-42 he was ac-
cused of high treason in Parliament. The next year he was Secre-
tary of State to the King. During the Commonwealth he went into
exile, and, returning after the Restoration, was made a Knight of the
Garter.

« GRIEVANCES AND OPPRESSIONS* UNDER CHARLES I.

(Delivered in Parliament, November gth, 1640, on Moving the Remonstrance

to the King)
Mr. Speaker: —

You have received now a solemn account from most of the
shires of England of the several grievances and oppressions
they sustain, and nothing as yet from Dorsetshire. Sir, I
would not have you think that I serve for a land of Goshen,
that we live there in sunshine, whilst darkness and plagues over-
spread the rest of the land; as little would I have you think that
being under the same sharp measure as the rest, we are either

LORD GEORGE DIGBY

insensible or benumbed, or that the shire wanteth a servant to
represent its sufferings boldly.

It is true, Mr. Speaker, the county of Dorset hath not digested
its complaints into that formal way of petition which others (I
see) have done, but have intrusted them to my partners and my
delivery of them by word of mouth unto this honorable House.
And there was given unto us in the county court, the day of our
election, a short memorial of the heads of them, which was read
in the hearing of the freeholders there present, who all unani-
mously with one voice signified upon each particular, that it was
their desire that we should represent them to the Parliament,
which, with your leave, I shall do, and these they are: —

1. The great and intolerable burden of Ship-Money, touching the
legality whereof they are unsatisfied.

2. The many great abuses in pressing of soldiers, and raising
money concerning the same.

3. The multitude of monopolies.

4. The new canon, and the oath to be taken by lawyers, divines,
etc.

5. The oath required to be taken by Church officers according to
articles new and unusual.

Besides this there was likewise presented to us by a very
considerable part of the clergy of that county a note of remon-
strance containing these two particulars: —

Firstly, the imposition of a new oath required to be taken by all
ministers and others, which they conceive to be illegal, and such as
they cannot take with a good conscience.

Secondly, the requiring of a pretended benevolence, but in effect
a subsidy, under the penalty of suspension, excommunication, and de-
privation, all benefit of appeal excluded.

This is all we had particularly in charge, but that I may not
appear a remiss servant of my country and of this House, give
me leave to add somewhat of my own sense.

Truly, Mr. Speaker, the injurious sufferings of some worthy
Members of this House, since the dissolution of the last two Par-
liaments, are so fresh in my memory that I was resolved not to
open my mouth in any business wherein freedom and plain deal-
ing were requisite, until such time as the breach of our privi-
leges was vindicated and the safety of speech settled.

LORD GEORGE DIGBV

1863

But since such excellent Members of our House thought fit
the other day to lay aside that caution and to discharge their
souls so freely in the way of zeal to his Majesty's service and
their country's good, I shall interpret that confidence of theirs
for a lucky omen to this Parliament, and with your permission
license my thoughts, too, a little.

Mr. Speaker, under those heads which I proposed to you as
the grievances of Dorsetshire, I suppose are comprised the great-
est part of the mischiefs which have of late years laid battery
either to our estates or consciences.

Sir, I do not conceive this the fit season to search and venti-
late particulars, yet I profess I cannot forbear to add somewhat
to what was said the last day by a learned gentleman of the
long robe, concerning the acts of that reverend new synod, made
of an old convocation. Doth not every Parliament man's heart
rise to see the prelates thus usurp to themselves the grand pre-
eminence of Parliament ? The granting of subsidies, and that
under so preposterous a name as of a benevolence, for that which
is a malevolence, indeed; a malevolence I am confident in those
that granted it against Parliaments, and a malevolence surely
in those that refuse it, against those that granted it, — for how
can it incite less when they see wrested from them what they
are not willing to part with, under no less a penalty than the
loss of both heaven and earth: of heaven by excommunication,
and of the earth by deprivation, — and this without redemption by
appeal ? What good Christian can think with patience on such
an ensnaring oath as that which is by the new canons enjoined
to be taken by all ministers, lawyers, physicians, and graduates
in the universities, where, besides the swearing such an imper-
tinence, as that things necessary to salvation are contained in
discipline; besides the swearing those to be of divine right,
which, amongst the learned, never pretended to it as the arch
things in our hierarchy; besides the swearing not to consent to
the change of that which the State may, upon great reason,
think fit to alter; besides the bottomless perjury of an " et
cetera* — besides all this, Mr. Speaker, men must swear that
they swear freely and voluntarily what they are compelled unto;
and, lastly, that they swear that oath in the literal sense, whereof
no two of the makers themselves that I have heard of, could
ever agree in the understanding ?

1 864

LORD GEORGE DIGBY

In a word, Mr. Speaker, to tell you my opinion of this oath,
it is a covenant against the King, for bishops and the hierarchy;
as the Scottish covenant is against them, only so much worse
than the Scottish, as they admit not of the supremacy in ecclesi-
astical affairs, and we are sworn unto it.

Now, Mr. Speaker, for those particular heads of grievances
whereby our estates and properties are so radically invaded, I
suppose (as I said before) that it is no season now to enter into
a strict discussion of them; only this much I shall say of them,
with application to the country for which I serve, that none can
more justly complain, since none can more fully challenge ex-
emption from such burdens than Dorsetshire, whether you con-
sider it a country subsisting much by trade, or as none of the
most populous, or as exposed as much as any to foreign invasion.

But alas, Mr. Speaker, particular lamentations are hardly dis-
tinguishable in universal groans.

Mr. Speaker, it hath been a metaphor frequent in Parliament,
and, if my memory fail me not, was made use of in the lord
keeper's speech at the opening of the last, that what money
kings raised from their subjects, they were but as vapors drawn
up from the earth by the sun, to be distilled upon it again in
fructifying showers. The comparison, Mr. Speaker, hath held of
late years too unluckily; what hath been raised from the subject
by those violent attractions hath been formed, it is true, into
clouds. But how ? To darken the sun's own lustre ! And it hath
fallen again upon the land only in hailstones and mildews, to
batter and prostrate still more and more our liberties, to blast
and wither our affections, had the latter of these been still kept
alive by our King's own personal virtues, which will ever pre-
serve him, in spite of all ill counselors, a sacred object, both of
our admiration and love.

Mr. Speaker, it hath been often said in this House, and I
think it can never be too often repeated, that the kings of Eng-
land can do no wrong; but though they could, Mr. Speaker, yet
princes have no part in the ill of those actions which their
judges assure them to be just, their counselors that they are
prudent, and their divines that they are conscientious.

This consideration, Mr. Speaker, leadeth me to that which is
more necessary far, at this season, than any further laying open
of our miseries, — that is, the way to the remedy, by seeking to
remove from our Sovereign, such unjust judges, such pernicious

LORD GEORGE DIGBY

1865

counselors, and such disconscient divines, as have of late years,
by their wicked practices, provoked aspersions upon the govern-
ment of the graciousest and best of kings.

Mr. Speaker, let me not be misunderstood, I level at no man
with a forelaid design. Let the faults, and those well proved,
lead us to the men; it is the only true parliamentary method and
the only fit one to incline our Sovereign. For it can no more
conflict with a gracious and righteous prince to expose his serv-
ants, upon irregular prejudices, than with a wise prince to with-
hold malefactors, how great soever, from the course of orderly
justice.

Let me acquaint you, Mr. Speaker, with an aphorism in
Hypocrates, no less authentic, I think, in the body politic than
in the natural. Thus it is, Mr. Speaker, "bodies to be thor-
oughly and effectually purged must have their humors first made
fluid and movable."

The humors that I understand to have caused all the desper-
ate maladies of this nation are the ill ministers. To purge them
away clearly they must first be loosened, unsettled, and extenu-
ated, which can no way be affected with a gracious master, but
by truly representing them unworthy of his protection.

And this leadeth me to my motion, which is, that a select
committee may be appointed to draw out of all that hath here
been represented, such a remonstrance as may be a faithful and
lively representation unto his Majesty of the deplorable estate of
this Kingdom, and such as may happily discover unto his clear
and excellent judgment the pernicious authors of it. And that
this remonstrance being drawn, we may with all speed repair to
the lords, and desire them to join with us in it; and this is my
humble motion.

THE ARMY IN DOMESTIC POLITICS

(Delivered in the House of Commons, April 2ist, 1641, on the Bill of Attainder

against Strafford)

WE ARE now upon the point of giving, as much as in us lies,
the final sentence unto death or life, on a great minister
of state and peer of this kingdom, Thomas, Earl of Straf-
ford, a name of hatred in the present age for his practices, and
fit to be made a terror to future ages by his punishment.

Xg66 LORD GEORGE DIGBY

I have had the honor to be employed by the House in this
great business, from the first hour it was taken into considera-
tion. It was a matter of great trust; and I will say with confi-
dence that I have served the House in it, not only with industry,
according to my ability, but with most exact faithfulness and
justice.

And as I have hitherto discharged my duty to this House
and to my country in the progress of this great cause, so I trust
I shall do now, in the last period of it, to God and to a good
conscience. I do wish the peace of that to myself, and the
blessing of Almighty God to me and my posterity, according as
my judgment on the life of this man shall be consonant with my
heart, and the best of my understanding in all integrity.

I know well that by some things I have said of late, while
this bill was in agitation, I have raised some prejudices against
me in the cause. Yea, some (I thank them for their plain deal-
ing) have been so free to tell me, that I have suffered much by
the backwardness I have shown in the bill of attainder of the
Earl of Strafford, against whom I have formerly been so keen,
so active.

I beg of you, Mr. Speaker, and the rest, but a suspension of
judgment concerning me, till I have opened my heart to you,
clearly and freely, in this business. Truly, sir, I am still the same
in my opinion and affections as to the Earl of Strafford. I con-
fidently believe him to be the most dangerous minister, the most
insupportable to free subjects, that can be charactered. I believe
that his practices in themselves to have been as high and tyran-
nical as any subject ever ventured on; and the malignity of them
greatly aggravated by those rare abilities of his, whereof God
hath given him the use, but the devil the application. In a
word, I believe him to be still that grand apostate to the Com-
monwealth, who must not expect to be pardoned in this world
till he be dispatched to the other.

And yet let me tell you, Mr. Speaker, my hand must not be
to that dispatch. I protest, as my conscience stands informed, I
had rather it were off.

Let me unfold to you the mystery, Mr. Speaker: I will not
dwell much upon justifying to you my seeming variance at this
time from what I was formerly, by putting you in mind of the
difference between prosecutors and judges — how misbecoming
that fervor would be in a judge which, perhaps, was commend-

LORD GEORGE DIGBY ,867

able in a prosecutor. Judges we are now, and must, therefore, put
on another personage. It is honest and noble to be earnest in
order to the discovery of truth; but when that hath been brought
so far as it can be to light, our judgment thereupon ought to be
calm and cautious. In prosecution upon probable grounds we
are accountable only for our industry or remissness; but in judg-
ment we are deeply responsible to Almighty God for its recti-
tude or obliquity. In cases of life, the judge is God's steward of
the party's blood, and must give a strict account of every drop.

But, as I told you, Mr. Speaker, I will not insist long upon
this ground of difference in me from what I was formerly. The
truth of it is, sir, the same ground whereupon I, with the rest of
the few to whom you first committed the consideration of my
Lord Strafford, brought down our opinion that it was fit he
should be accused of treason — upon the same ground, I was en-
gaged with earnestness in his prosecution; and had the same
ground remained in that force of belief in me, which till very
lately it did, I should not have been tender in his condemnation.
But truly, sir, to deal plainly with you, that ground of our ac-
cusation— that which should be the basis of our judgment of
the Earl of Strafford as to treason — is, to my understanding,
quite vanished away.

This it was, Mr. Speaker, — his advising the King to employ
the army in Ireland to reduce England. This I was assured
would be proved before I gave my consent to his accusation. I
was confirmed in the same belief during the prosecution, and
fortified most of all in it after Sir Henry Vane's preparatory ex-
amination, by assurances which that worthy Member, Mr. Pym,
gave me, that his testimony would be made convincing by some
notes of what passed in the Junto (Privy Council) concurrent
with it. This I ever understood would be of some other coun-
selor; but you see now, it proves only to be a copy of the same
secretary's notes, discovered and produced in the manner you
have heard; and those such disjointed fragments of the venom-
ous parts of discourses — no results, no conclusions of councils,
which are the only things that secretaries should register, there
being no use of the other but to accuse and bring men into
danger.

But, sir, this is not that which overthrows the evidence with
me concerning the army in Ireland, nor yet that all the rest of
the Junto remember nothing, of it; but this, sir, which I shall

LORD GEORGE DIGBY

tell you, is that which works with me, under favor, to an utter
overthrow of his evidence as touching the army of Ireland. Be-
fore, while I was prosecutor, and under tie of secrecy, I might
not discover (disclose) any weakness of the cause, which now, as
Judge, I must.

Mr. Secretary Vane was examined thrice upon oath at the
preparatory committee. The first time he was questioned as to
all the interrogatories; and to that part of the seventh which
concerns the army of Ireland, he said positively these words:
(< I cannot charge him with that " ; but for the rest, he desired
time to recollect himself, which was granted him. Some days
after, he was examined a second time, and then deposed these
words concerning the King's being absolved from rules of gov-
ernment, and so forth, very clearly. But being pressed as to
that part of the Irish army, he said he could say <( nothing to
that." Here we thought we had done with him, till divers
weeks after, my Lord of Northumberland, and all others of the
Junto, denying to have heard anything concerning those words
of reducing England by the Irish army, it was thought fit to
examine the secretary once more; and then he deposed these
words to have been spoken by the Earl of Straff ord to his Maj-
esty : " You have an army in Ireland, which you may employ
here to reduce [or some word to that sense] this kingdom." Mr.
Speaker, these are the circumstances which I confess with my
conscience, thrust quite out of doors that grand article of our
charge concerning his desperate advice to the King of employing
the Irish army here.

Let not this, I beseech you, be driven to an aspersion upon
Mr. Secretary, as if he should have sworn otherwise than he
knew or believed. He is too worthy to do that. Only let this
much be inferred from it, that he, who twice upon oath, with
time of recollection, could not remember anything of such a
business, might well, a third time, misremember somewhat; and
in this business the difference of one word "here" for "there,"
or "that" for "this," quite alters the case; the latter also being
the more probable, since it is confessed on all hands that the
debate then was concerning a war with Scotland. And you may
remember that at the bar he once said, <( employ there. " And
thus, Mr. Speaker, have I faithfully given you an account what
it is that hath blunted the edge of the hatchet, or bill, with me,
toward my Lord Strafford.

LORD GEORGE DIGBY

1869

This was that whereupon I accused him with a free heart;
prosecuted him with earnestness; and had it to my understanding
been proved, should have condemned him with innocence; whereas
now I cannot satisfy my conscience to do it. I profess I can
have no notion of any body's intent to subvert the laws treason-
ably, but by force; and this design of force not appearing, all
his other wicked practices cannot amount so high with me. I
can find a more easy and natural spring from whence to derive
all his other crimes than from an intent to bring in tyranny,
and make his own posterity, as well as us, slaves; viz., from
revenge, from pride, from passion, and from insolence of nature.
But had this of the Irish army been proved, it would have dif-
fused a complexion of treason over all. It would have been a
withe, indeed, to bind all those other scattered and lesser branches,
as it were, into a fagot of treason.

I do not say but the rest of the things charged may represent
him a man as worthy to die, and perhaps worthier than many a
traitor. I do not say but they may justly direct us to enact that
they shall be treason for the future. But God keep me from
giving judgment of death on any man, and of ruin to his inno-
cent posterity, upon a law made & posteriori. Let the mark be
set on the door where the plague is, and then let him that will
enter, die.

I know, Mr. Speaker, there is in Parliament a double power
of life and death by bill, a judicial power, and a legislative.
The measure of the one is what is legally just; of the other,
what is prudentially and politically fit for the good and preser-
vation of the whole. But these two, under favor, are not to be
confounded in judgment. We must not piece out want of legal-
ity with matter of convenience, nor the defailance of prudential
fitness with a pretense of legal justice.

To condemn my Lord of Strafford judicially, as for treason,
my conscience is not assured that the matter will bear it, and to
do it by the legislative power, my reason consultively cannot
agree to that, since I am persuaded that neither the lords nor
the King will pass this bill; and, consequently, that our pass-
ing it will be a cause of great divisions and contentions in the
state.

Therefore, my humble advice is, that, laying aside this bill of
attainder, we may think of another, saving only life, such as may
secure the state from my Lord of Strafford, without endangering

1870

LORD GEORGE DIGBY

it as much by division concerning his punishment as he hath
endangered it by his practices.

If this may not be hearkened unto, let me conclude in saying
that to you all which I have thoroughly inculcated upon mine
own conscience, on this occasion. Let every man lay his hand
upon his own heart and seriously consider what we are going to
do with a breath; either justice or murder — justice on the one
side, or murder, heightened and aggravated to its supremest ex-
tent, on the other! For, as the casuists say, he who lies with his
sister commits incest, but he that marries his sister sins higher,
by applying God's ordinance to his crime; so, doubtless, he that
commits murder with the sword of justice, heightens that crime
to the utmost.

The danger being so great and the case so doubtful that I
see the best lawyers in diametrical opposition concerning it, let
every man wipe his heart as he does his eyes, when he would
judge of a nice and subtle object. The eye, if it be pretinctured
with any color, is vitiated in its discerning. Let us take heed of
a blood-shotten eye in judgment. Let every man purge his
heart clear of all passions. I know this great and wise body po-
litic can have none; but I speak to individuals from the weak-
ness which I find in myself. Away with personal animosities!
Away with all flatteries to the people, in being the sharper
against him because he is odious to them! Away with all fears,
lest by sparing his blood they may be incensed! Away with all
such considerations, as that it is not fit for a Parliament that one
accused by it of treason should escape with life! Let not former
vehemence of any against him, nor fear from thence that he
cannot be safe while that man lives, be an ingredient in the
sentence of any one of us.

Of all these corruptives of judgment, Mr. Speaker, I do, be-
fore God, discharge myself to the utmost of my power; and do
now, with a clear conscience, wash my hands of this man's blood
by this solemn protestation, that my vote goes not to the taking
of the Earl of Stafford's life.

1871

SIR CHARLES WENTWORTH DILKE, BART.

(1843-)

IHE distinguished author of ( Greater Britain* was born at
Chelsea, September 4th, 1843. His father, the late Sir Charles
Wentworth Dilke, was prominent in the intellectual life of
his day, and his * Papers of a Critic,' edited by his son, keep their
place in the libraries of England and America.

After his graduation from Trinity Hall, Cambridge, in January
1866, as "Senior Legalist," Sir Charles was called to the bar at the
Middle Temple. Soon afterwards he made the celebrated tour of the
world which resulted in the production of "Greater Britain" — a work
which is believed to have had a larger sale than any other "first
book" of its class ever printed in English. Sir Charles traveled in
the United States, Canada, Australia, India, and other countries which
either acknowledge English authority or represent the "Anglo-Saxon "
tradition. Studying the influence of race on institutions, and of cli-
matic and geographical conditions on race, he presented new prob-
lems for consideration, and forced his work on public attention as
one which showed marked originality and great intellectual activity.

Returning to England, Sir Charles, who has always been a Radi-
cal in politics, was elected to Parliament from the new borough of
Chelsea, which he continued to represent until his defeat in 1886.
When re-elected, it was for Forest of Dean in Gloucestershire, which
he now represents.

Among the numerous achievements of his parliamentary career,
was the abolition of "drawing and quartering," which still remained
a legal method of punishment in England until he compelled the at-
tention of the House of Commons to it. Another was the reform
through which school boards are elected by the rate-payers. In
May 1880 he became Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs
in the Gladstone ministry. In 1881-82 he was chairman of the Royal
Commission for Negotiating a Commercial Treaty with France; in
December 1892 he was appointed President of the Local Govern-
ment Board with a seat in the Cabinet, and the following year he
took charge of and carried the Unreformed Corporation Bill. In 1884
he was chairman of the Royal Commission for Housing the Poor,
and in 1885 he took charge of and carried the Diseases Prevention
Act.

!872 SIR CHARLES WENT WORTH DILKE, BART.

At the beginning of his parliamentary career he openly declared
that he preferred a republic to a constitutional monarchy, and one of
his speeches on the expense of monarchy prompted a celebrated
response in favor of aristocracy from Disraeli. As a speaker, Sir
Charles is forcible and direct. Few men in English public life have
spoken more effectively, but as he does not prepare his speeches by
writing them in advance, some of his best and most representative
efforts are reported only in synopsis. Without doubt he has been
more effective in a practical way as a speaker than as an author,
but since it is as the author of ( Greater Britain' and works on re-
lated subjects that he first made his international reputation, a rule
of the World's Great Orations is suspended in his case, and the ex-
amples of his style here given are from his * Greater Britain > rather
than from his speeches. He is the author of other notable works
besides ( Greater Britain J — among them ( The Present Position of
European Politics (1887)*; 'The British Army*; ( Problems of Greater
Britain >; and ( The Fall of Prince Florestan of Monaco, > a satire
which, when he published it anonymously in 1874, had a great run in
England, and was translated into French.

Sir Charles is generally recognized as the ablest living opponent
of English Conservatism. As a Radical he is eminently practical.
There is nothing destructive or emotional in his theories of govern-
ment, and the parliamentary debates show that on all questions of
the greatest moment, — especially on those affecting England's foreign
policy and the condition of her city populations, — he has been one
of the most efficient constructive statesmen of his day. He has had
the Premiership of England in reach, and if English Liberals had the
courage of their convictions, they might have in him now a leader
capable of giving Liberalism a meaning it has lost since the death
of Gladstone.

In 1898, Sir Charles in a public statement which was cabled to
this country, reiterated his well-known views on America and the
possibilities of achievement in its future. As a result, he was asked
to take the premiership of the Advisory Council of the World's
Best Orations. When the idea of the work was explained to him,
he promptly accepted the position, and has greatly contributed — as
have all other members of the Council — to the success of the work.

SIR CHARLES WENTWORTH DILKE, BART. ,873

AMERICA

WE ARE coasting again, gliding through calm, blue waters,
watching the dolphins as they play, and the boobies as
they fly, stroke and stroke, with the paddles of the ship.
On the right, mountains rise through the warm, misty air, and
form a long towering line upon the upper skies. Hanging high
above us are the volcano of fire and that of water — twin men-
acers of Guatemala city. In the sixteenth century the water-
mountain drowned it; in the eighteenth it was burnt by the
fire-hill. Since then the city has been shaken to pieces by earth-
quakes, and of sixty thousand men and women, hardly one es-
caped. Down the valley, between the peaks, we have through
the mahogany groves an exquisite distant view toward the city.
Once more passing on, we get peeps, now of West Honduras,
and now of the island coffee plantations of Costa Rica. The
heat is terrible. It was just here, if we are to believe Drake,
that he fell in with a shower so hot and scalding that each drop
burnt its hole through his men's clothes as they hung up to dry.
<( Steep stories, w it is clear, were known before the plantation of
America.

Now that the time has come for a leave-taking of the conti-
nent, we can begin to reflect upon facts gleaned during visits to
twenty-nine of the forty-five Territories and States — twenty-nine
empires the size of Spain.

A man may see American countries, from the pine wastes of
Maine to the slopes of Sierra; may talk with American men and
women, from the sober citizens of Boston to Digger Indians in
California; may eat of American dishes, from jerked buffalo in
Colorado to clambakes on the shores near Salem; and yet, from
the time he first <( smells the molasses " at Nantucket light-ship
to the moment when the pilot quits him at the Golden Gate,
may have no idea of an America. You may have seen the
East, the South, the West, the Pacific States, and yet have failed
to find America. It is not till you have left her shores that her
image grows up in the mind.

The first thing that strikes the Englishman just landed in
New York is the apparent Latinization of the English in Amer-
ica; but before he leaves the country he comes to see that this
is at most a local fact, and that the true moral of America is
v — n8

SIR CHARLES WENTWORTH DILKE, BART.

the vigor of the English race — the defeat of the cheaper by the
dearer peoples, the victory of the man whose food costs four
shillings a day over the man whose food costs four pence. Ex-
cluding the Atlantic cities, the English in America are absorbing
the Germans and the Celts, destroying the Red Indians, and
checking the advance of the Chinese.

The Saxon is the only extirpating race on earth. Up to the
commencement of the now inevitable destruction of the Red
Indians of Central North America, of the Maories, and of the
Australians by the English colonists, no numerous race had ever
been blotted out by an invader. The Danes and Saxons amal-
gamated with the Britons, the Goths and Burgundians with the
Gauls; the Spaniards not only never annihilated a people, but
have themselves been all but completely expelled by the Indians
in Mexico and South America. The Portuguese in Ceylon, the
Dutch in Java, the French in Canada and Algeria, have con-
quered but not killed off the native peoples. Hitherto it has
been nature's rule that the race that peopled a country in the
earliest historic days should people it to the end of time. The
American problem is this: Does the law, in a modified shape,
hold good, in spite of the destruction of the native population ?
Is it true that the negroes, now that they are free, are com-
mencing slowly to die out — that the New Englanders are dying
fast, and their places being supplied by immigrants ? Can the
English in America, in the long run, survive the common fate
of all migrating races ? Is it true that, if the American settlers
continue to exist, it will be at the price of being no longer
English, but Red Indian ? It is certain that the English fami-
lies long in the land have the features of the extirpated race;
on the other hand, in the negroes there is at present no trace of
any change, save in their becoming dark brown instead of black.

The Maories — an immigrant race — were dying off in New
Zealand when we landed there. The Red Indians of Mexico —
another immigrant people — had themselves undergone decline,
numerical and moral, when we first became acquainted with
them. Are we English in turn to degenerate abroad, under
pressure of a great natural law forbidding change ? It is easy to
say that the English in Old England are not a native, but an
immigrant race; that they show no symptoms of decline. There,
however, the change was slight, the distance short, the difference
of climate small.

SIR CHARLES WENTWORTH DILKE, BART. ,875

The rapidity of the disappearance of physical type is equaled
at least, if not succeeded, by that of the total alteration of the
moral characteristics of the immigrant races — the entire destruc-
tion of eccentricity, in short. The change that comes over those
among the Irish who do not remain in the great towns is not
greater than that which overtakes the English hand-workers, of
whom some thousands reach America each year. Gradually set-
tling down on land, and finding themselves lost in a sea of in-
telligence, and freed from the inspiring obstacles of antiquated
institutions and class prejudice, the English handicraftsman, ceas-
ing to be roused to aggressive Radicalism by the opposition of
sinister interests, merges into the contented homestead settler or
adventurous backwoodsman. Greater even than this revolution
of character is that which falls upon the Celt. Not only is it a
fact known alike to physiologists and statisticians, that the child-
ren of Irish parents born in America are, physically, not Irish,
but Americans, but the like is true of the moral type; the
change in this is at least as sweeping. The son of Fenian Pat
and bright-eyed Biddy is the normal, gaunt American, quick of
thought, but slow of speech, whom we have begun to recognize
as the latest production of the Saxon race, when housed upon
the Western prairies, or in the pine woods of New England.

For the moral change in the British workmen it is not diffi-
cult to account; the man who will leave country, home, and
friends, to seek new fortunes in America, is essentially not an
ordinary man. As a rule, he is above the average in intelli-
gence, or, if defective in this point, he makes up for lack of wit
by the possession of concentrativeness and energy. Such a man
will have pushed himself to the front in his club, his union, or
his shop, before he emigrates. In England he is somebody; in
America he finds all hands contented, or, if not this, at all events
too busy to complain of such ills as they profess to labor under.
Among contented men, his equals both in intelligence and ambi-
tion, in a country of perfect freedom of speech, of manners, of
laws, and of society, the occupation of his mind is gone, and he
comes to think himself what others seem to think him — a no-
body; a man who no longer is a living force. He settles upon
land; and when the world knows him no more, his children are
happy corn-growers in his stead.

The shape of North America makes the existence of distinct
peoples within her limits almost impossible. An upturned bowl,

Xg76 SIR CHARLES WENTWORTH DILKE, BART.

with a mountain rim, from which the streams run inward toward
the centre, she must fuse together all the races that settle within
her borders, and the fusion must now be in an English mold.

There are homogenous foreign populations in several portions
of the United States; not only the Irish and Chinese, at whose
prospects we have already glanced, but also Germans in Pennsyl-
vania, Spanish in Florida, French in Louisiana and at Sault de
Ste. Marie. In Wisconsin there is a Norwegian population of over
a hundred thousand, retaining their own language and their own
architecture, and presenting the appearance of a tough morsel for
the English to digest; at the same time, the Swedes were the
first settlers of Delaware and New Jersey, and there they have
disappeared.

Milwaukee is a Norwegian town. The houses are narrow and
high, the windows many, with circular tops ornamented in wood
or dark-brown stone, and a heavy wooden cornice crowns the
front. The churches have the wooden bulb and spire which are
characteristic of the Scandinavian public buildings. The Nor-
wegians will not mix with other races, and invariably flock to
spots where there is already a large population speaking their
own tongue. Those who enter Canada generally become dissat-
isfied with the country, and pass on into Wisconsin or Minnesota,
but the Canadian Government has now under its consideration a
plan for founding a Norwegian colony on Lake Huron. The
numbers of this people are not so great as to make it important
to inquire whether they will ever merge into the general popula-
tion. Analogy would lead us to expect that they will be ab-
sorbed; their existence is not historical, like that of the French
in Lower Canada.

From Burlington, in Iowa, I had visited a spot the history
of which is typical of the development of America — Nauvoo.
Founded in 1840 by Joe Smith, the Mormon city stood upon a
bluff overhanging the Des Moines Rapids of the Mississippi, pre-
senting on the land-side the aspect of a gentle, graceful slope
surmounted by a plain. After the fanatical pioneers of English
civilization had been driven from the city and their temple
burned, there came Cabet's Icarian band, who tried to found a
new France in the desert; but in 1856 the leader died, and his
people dispersed themselves about the States of Iowa and Mis-
souri. Next came the English settlers, active, thriving, regard-
less of tradition, and Nauvoo is entering on a new life as the

SIR CHARLES WENT WORTH DILKE, BART.

capital of a wine-growing country. I found Cabet and the Mor-
mons alike forgotten. The ruins of the temple have disappeared,
and the huge stones have been used up in cellars, built to con-
tain the Hock — a pleasant wine, like Zeltinger.

The bearing upon religion of the gradual destruction of race
is of great moment to the world. Christianity will gain by the
change; but which of its many branches will receive support is
a question which only admits of an imperfect answer. Arguing
a priori, we should expect to find that, on the one hand, a
tendency toward unity would manifest itself, taking the shape,
perhaps, of a gain of strength by the Catholic and Anglican
Churches; on the other hand, there would be a contrary and still
stronger tendency toward an infinite multiplication of beliefs, till
millions of men and women would become each of them his
own church. Coming to the actual cases in which we can trace
the tendencies that commence to manifest themselves, we find
that in America the Anglican Church is gaining ground, espe-
cially on the Pacific side, and that the Catholics do not seem to
meet with any such success as we should have looked for; re-
taining, indeed, their hold over the Irish women and a portion
of the men, and having their historic French branches in Lou-
isiana and in Canada, but not, unless it be in the cities of New
York and Philadelphia, making much way among the English.

Between San Francisco and Chicago, for religious purposes
the most cosmopolitan of cities, we have to draw distinctions.
In the Pacific city, the disturbing cause is the presence of New
Yorkers; in the metropolis of the Northwestern States, it is the
dominance of New England ideas; still, we shall find no two
cities so free from local color, and from the influence of race.
The result of an examination is not encouraging; in both cities
there is much external show in the shape of Church attendance;
in neither does religion strike its roots deeply into the hearts of
its citizens, except so far as it is alien and imported.

The Spiritualist and Unitarian Churches are both of them in
Chicago extremely strong; they support newspapers and period-
icals of their own, and are led by men of remarkable ability and
energy, but they are not the less Cambridge Unitarianism, Bos-
ton Spiritualism; there is nothing of the Northwest about them.
In San Francisco, on the other hand, Anglicanism is prospering,
but it is New York Episcopalianism, sustained by immigrants and
money from the East; in no sense is it a Californian Church.

!878 SIR CHARLES WENTWORTH DILKE, BART.

Throughout America the multiplication of churches is rapid,
but, among the native-born Americans, Supernaturalism is advanc-
ing with great strides. The Shakers are strong in thought, the
Spiritualists in wealth and numbers; Communism gains ground,
but not Polygamy — the Mormon is a purely European Church.

There is just now progressing in America a great movement,
headed by the <( Radical Unitarians, B toward <( free religion, * or
Church without creed. The leaders deny that there is sufficient
security for the spread of religion in each man's individual
action; they desire collective work by all free-thinkers and liberal
religionists in the direction of truth and purity of life. Christ-
ianity is higher than dogma, we are told; there is no way out
of infinite multiplication of creeds but by their total extirpation.
Oneness of purpose and a common love for truth form the mem-
bers' only tie. Elder Frederick Evans said to me, <(A11 truth
forms part of Shakerism w ; but these free religionists assure us
that in all truth consists their sole religion.

The distinctive feature of these American philosophical and
religious systems is their gigantic width; for instance, every
human being who admits that disembodied spirits may in any
way hold intercourse with dwellers upon earth, whatever else he
may believe or disbelieve, is claimed by the Spiritualists as a
member of their Church. They tell us that by <( Spiritualism
they understand whatever bears relation to spirit*; their system
embraces all existence, brute, human, and divine ; in fact, tf the
real man is a spirit.* According to these ardent proselytizers,
every poet, every man with a grain of imagination in his nature,
is a <( Spiritualist. w They claim Plato, Socrates, Milton, Shakes-
peare, Washington Irving, Charles Dickens, Luther, Melanchthon,
Paul, Stephen, the whole of the Hebrew prophets, Homer, and
John Wesley, among the members of their Church. They have
lately canonized new saints; St. Confucius, St. Theodore (Parker),
St. Ralph (Waldo Emerson), St. Emma (Hardings), all figure in
their calendar. It is a noteworthy fact that the saints are mostly
resident in New England.

The tracts published at the Spiritual Clarion Office, Auburn,
New York, put forward Spiritualism as a religion, which is to
stand toward existing churches as did Christianity toward Juda-
ism, and announce a new dispensation to the people of the earth
<( who have sown their wild oats in Christianity. w But they spell
<( supersede * with a <( c. *

SIR CHARLES WENTWORTH DILKE, BART.

This strange religion has long since left behind the rappings
and table-turnings in which it took its birth. The secret of its
success is that it supplies to every man the satisfaction of the
universal craving for the supernatural in any form in which he
will receive it. The Spiritualists claim two millions of active be-
lievers and five million " favorers * in America.

The presence of a large German population is thought by
some to have an important bearing on the religious future of
America, but the Germans have hitherto kept themselves apart
from the intellectual progress of the nation. They for the most
part withdraw from towns, and, retaining their language and sup-
porting local papers of their own, live out of the world of Amer-
ican literature, politics, and thought, taking, however, at rare
intervals, a patriotic part in national affairs, as was notably the
case at the time of the last rebellion. Living thus by them-
selves, they have even less influence upon American religious
thought than have the Irish, who, speaking the English tongue,
and dwelling almost exclusively in towns, are brought more in
contact with the daily life of the republic. The Germans in
America are in the main pure materialists under a certain show
of deism; but hitherto there has been no alliance between them
and the powerful Chicago Radical Unitarians — difference of lan-
guage having thus far proved a bar to the formation of a league
which would otherwise have been inevitable.

On the whole, it would seem that for the moment religious
prospects are not bright; the tendency is rather toward intense
and unhealthily developed feeling in the few, and subscription
to some one of the Episcopalian Churches — Catholic, Anglican,
or Methodist — among the many, coupled with real indifference.
Neither the tendency to unity of creeds nor that toward infinite
multiplication of beliefs has yet made that progress which ab-
stract speculation would have led us to expect. So far as we
can judge from the few facts before us, there is much likelihood
that multiplication will in the future prove too strong for unity.

After all, there is not in America a greater wonder than the
Englishman himself, for it is to this continent that you must
come to find him in full possession of his powers. Two hundred
and fifty millions of people speak or are ruled by those who
speak the English tongue and inhabit a third of the habitable
globe; but at the present rate of increase, in sixty years there
will be two hundred and fifty millions of Englishmen dwelling

SIR CHARLES WENTWORTH DILKE, BART.

in the United States alone. America has somewhat grown since
the time when it was gravely proposed to call her <( Alleghania, *
after a chain of mountains which, looking from this western side,
may be said to skirt her eastern border, and the loftiest peaks of
which are but half the height of the very passes of the Rocky
Mountains.

America is becoming, not English merely, but world-embracing
in the variety of its type; and as the English element has given
language and history, to that land, America offers the English
race the moral directorship of the globe, by ruling mankind
through Saxon institutions and the English tongue. Through
America, England is speaking to the world.

OMPHALISM

DASHING through a grove of cottonwood trees draped in big-
nonia and ivy, we came out suddenly upon a charming
scene; a range of huts and forts crowning a long, low hill
seamed with many a timber-clothed ravine, while the clear stream
of the Republican Fork wreathed itself about the woods and
bluffs. The blockhouse over which floated the Stars and Stripes
was Fort Riley, the Hyde Park Corner from which continents
are to measure all their miles ; the <( capital of the universe, w or
(< centre of the world. * Not that it has always been so. Geo-
graphers will be glad to learn that not only does the earth
gyrate, but that the centre of its crust also moves; within the
last ten years it has removed westward into Kansas from Mis-
souri, from Independence to Fort Riley. The contest for centre-
ship is no new 'thing. Herodotus held that Greece was the very
middle of the world, and that the unhappy Orientals were frozen,
and the yet more unfortunate Atlantic Indians baked every after-
noon of their poor lives in order that the sun might shine on
Greece at noon; London plumes herself on being the <( centre of
the terrestrial globe M ; Boston is the (< hub of the hull universe, w
though the latter claim is less physical than moral, I believe.
In Fort Riley, the Western men seem to have found the physi-
cal centre of the United States, but they claim for the Great
Plains as well the intellectual as the political leadership of the
whole continent. These hitherto untrodden tracts, they tell you,
form the heart of the empire, from which the lifeblood must

SIR CHARLES WENT WORTH DILKE, BART.

be driven to the extremities. Geographical and political centres
must ultimately coincide.

Connected with this belief is another Western theory — that
the powers of the future must be " Continental. w Germany, or
else Russia, is to absorb all Asia and Europe except Britain.
North America is already cared for, as the gradual extinction of
the Mexicans and absorption of the Canadians they consider cer-
tain. As for South America, the Californians are already plan-
ning an occupation of western Brazil, on the ground that the
continental power of South America must start from the head
waters of the great rivers and spread seaward down the streams.
Even in the Brazilian climate they believe that the Anglo-Saxon
is destined to become the dominant race.

The success of this omphalism, this government from the
centre, will be brought about, in the Western belief, by the ne-
cessity under which the natives on the head waters of all streams
will find themselves of having the outlets in their hands. Even
if it be true that railways are beating rivers, still the railways
must also lead seaward to the ports, and the need for their con-
trol is still felt by the producers in the centre countries of the
continent. The Upper States must everywhere command the
Lower, and salt-water despotism find its end.

The Americans of the Valley States, who fought all the more
heartily in the Federal cause from the fact that they were
battling for the freedom of the Mississippi against the men who
held its mouth, look forward to the time when they will have to
assert, peaceably but with firmness, their right to the freedom of
their railways through the North Atlantic States. Whatever their
respect for New England, it cannot be expected that they are
forever to permit Illinois and Ohio to be neutralized in the Sen-
ate by Rhode Island and Vermont. If it go hard with New Eng-
land, it will go still harder with New York, and the Western men
look forward to the day when Washington will be removed, Con-
gress and all, to Columbus or Fort Riley.

The singular wideness of Western thought, always verging on
extravagance, is traceable to the width of Western land. The
immensity of the continent produces a kind of intoxication; there
is moral dram-drinking in the contemplation of the map. No
Fourth of July oration can come up to the plain facts contained
in the land commissioner's report. The public domain of the
United States still consists of one thousand five hundred millions

SIR CHARLES WENTWORTH DILKE, BART.

of acres; there are two hundred thousand square miles of coal-
lands in the country, ten times as much as in all the remaining
world. In the Western Territories not yet States, there is land
sufficient to bear, at the English population rate, five hundred
and fifty millions of human beings.

It is strange to see how the Western country dwarfs the
Eastern States. Buffalo is called a (< Western city*; yet from
New York to Buffalo is only three hundred and fifty miles, and
Buffalo is but seven hundred miles to the west of the most eastern
point in all the United States. On the other hand, from Buffalo
we can go two thousand five hundred miles westward without
quitting the United States. <( The West * is eight times as wide
as the Atlantic States, and will soon be eight times as strong.

The conformation of North America is widely different to that
of any other continent on the globe. In Europe the glaciers of
the Alps occupy the centre point, and shed the waters toward
each of the surrounding seas; confluence is almost unknown. So
it is in Asia; there the Indus flowing into the Arabian Gulf,
the Oxus into the Sea of Aral, the Ganges into the Bay of Ben-
gal, the Yangtse Kiang into the Pacific, and the Yenesei into
the Arctic Ocean, all take their rise in the central table-land.
In South America the mountains form a wall upon the West,
whence the rivers flow eastward in parallel lines. In North
America alone are there mountains on each coast, and a trough
between, into which the rivers flow together, giving in a single
valley twenty-three thousand miles of navigable stream to be
plowed by steamships. The map proclaims the essential unity of
North America. Political geography might be a more interesting
study than it has yet been made.

i883

JOHN A. D1X

(1798-1879)

JOHN A. Dix was born at Boscawen, New Hampshire, July 24th,
1798, and educated partly in the schools of his native State
and partly in a French college at Montreal. He served in
the War of 1812, and returning was admitted to the bar of New York.
Becoming interested in politics he held various State offices until
1845, when he was elected to the United States Senate, where he
served four years. He was Postmaster of New York city and Secre-
tary of the Treasury under President Buchanan. In 1861 he became
a Major-General of volunteers, and afterwards served with the same
rank in the regular army. From 1866 to 1869 he was Minister to
France, and from 1873 to 1875 Governor of New York. He died in
New York city, April 2ist, 1879. While he is more noted as a sol-
dier and man of affairs than as a speaker, some passages from his
addresses have become celebrated. Among the most often quoted is
that on the Influence of Christianity on Politics, here reproduced
from (Munn's American Orator* (Boston 1853).

CHRISTIANITY AND POLITICS

THE influence of Christianity upon the political condition of
mankind, though silent and almost imperceptible, has doubt-
less been one of the most powerful instruments of its amel-
ioration. The principles and the practical rules of conduct which
it prescribes; the doctrine of the natural equality of men, of a
common origin, a common responsibility, and a common fate;
the lessons of humility, gentleness, and forbearance, which it
teaches, are as much at war with political as they are with all
moral injustice, oppression, and wrong. During century after
century, excepting for brief intervals, the world too often saw
the beauty of the system marred by the fiercest intolerance and
the grossest depravity. It has been made the confederate of
monarchs in carrying out schemes of oppression and fraud. Un-
der its banner armed multitudes have been banded together and

1 884 J°HN A' DIX

led on by martial prelates to wars of desolation and revenge.
Perpetrators of the blackest crimes have purchased from its chief
ministers a mercenary immunity from punishment.

But nearly two thousand years have passed away, and no
trace is left of the millions who, under the influence of bad pas-
sions, have dishonored its holy precepts, or of the far smaller
number who, in seasons of general depravation, have drunk its
current of living water on the solitary mountain or in the hollow
rock. Its simple maxims, outliving them all, are silently work-
ing out a greater revolution than any which the world has seen;
and long as the period may seem since its doctrines were first
announced, it is almost imperceptible when regarded as one of
the divisions of that time which is of endless duration. To use
the language of an eloquent and philosophical writer: —

<( The movements of Providence are not restricted to narrow
bounds; it is not anxious to deduce to-day the consequences of the
premises it laid down yesterday, It may defer this for ages, till the
fullness of time shall come. Its logic will not be less conclusive for
reasoning slowly. Providence moves through time as the gods of
Homer through space; it makes a step, and years have rolled away.
How long a time, how many circumstances, intervened before the re-
generation of the moral powers of man by Christianity exercised its
great, its legitimate function upon his social condition! Yet who can
doubt or mistake its power?*

i885

ALBERT B. DOD
(1805-1845)

ILBERT B. DOD was born at Medham, New Jersey, March 24th,
1805. A graduate of Princeton University, he was identified
with it during the whole of his brilliant career. Graduating
a doctor of divinity he filled the chair of mathematics at Princeton,
lectured on architecture, political economy, and other subjects, and
contributed to the reviews, besides preaching sermons which are
ranked as pulpit classics. He died November 2oth, 1845, at the
height of his usefulness. <(As a teacher, » writes one of his biograph-
ers, <( the genius of Professor Dod enkindled the enthusiasm of all
who came under his instructions, and made him eminent in his pro-
fession. As a champion for the truth, he was earnest, able, and suc-
cessful. He appeared before the public much more frequently as a
literary and scientific man than as a preacher. But when speaking
from the pulpit he never failed to command the most marked atten-
tion and fix deep in the mind the truth under discussion."

THE VALUE OF TRUTH
(From a Sermon on the Responsibility of Man for His Beliefs)

IT is evident that the happiness of man was intended to be de-
rived chiefly from his own internal dispositions. External
circumstances are but secondary and inferior sources of en-
joyment or suffering. In the heart itself is hid the secret foun-
tain which refreshes or saddens us with its sweet or bitter
waters. We can conceive of a heart so filled with pure affec-
tions, so informed with knowledge and strengthened by love, so
thoroughly fortified by acquiescence —

(<In the will Supreme
For time and for eternity; by Faith,
Faith absolute in God, including Hope,"

and the defense that lies in boundless love of his perfections,
that the darts of anguish, though they may strike upon that

ALBERT B. DOD

heart and wound it, cannot fix or rankle there. Upon the ruin of
all its expectations such a heart may gaze with subdued calm-
ness; through all the disasters of life it may pass untroubled, or
at least,

(<With only such degree of sadness left,
As may support longings of pure desire
And strengthen love, rejoicing secretly,
In the sublime attractions of the grave.*

So, too, we can conceive of a heart so weak that it can withstand
the presence of no external evil — so ignorant that, in the blank
and solitude of things, it is robbed of all enjoyment — so de-
praved that in the midst of all external advantages it is preyed
upon by hatred, malice, envy, and all disturbing passions; it is
within the compass of moral excellence to produce the one of
these states — and the other does not transcend the capabilities
of vice. The obvious tendency of virtue, in whatever degree it
be cultivated, is to produce happiness; and vice, by an equally
obvious and indissoluble connection, is the parent of misery.
The man who disobeys his reason, or violates his conscience, in
his search after happiness, grasps at a good at the expense of
the very appetite which is to relish it. To injure his moral
nature is to waste and wear away his only capability of hap-
piness. If we take the constitution of man to pieces, as we
would a watch or other piece of mechanism, to ascertain the ob-
ject for which it was constructed, we see evident marks in every
part that virtue was the end for which its Maker designed it.
And if we then inquire further how this end is to be gained,
that is, how men are to become virtuous, we find equally strong
reasons for concluding that it can only be through a belief of
the truth. The essence of virtue consists in its principle; and
every moral principle has its root in truth. Error may be pro-
ductive of some partial and transient good, as when a crying
child is stilled, or a refractory one frightened into obedience, by
a belief in some nursery fiction; but no one doubts that this
trivial good is purchased at a lamentable sacrifice. Every honest
man knows that whenever he uses deception and falsehood to
promote even a good end, he is sacrificing the law of reason to
the dictates of a low and short-sighted policy, and that he gains
his end only as he would gain the sword which he should pur-
chase' wuh the loss of the arm that is to wield it. Truth is the

ALBERT B. DOD

1887

only agency by which a principle of good can be implanted and
nourished in our own hearts, or in others. It is as inseparable
from virtue as virtue itself is from happiness. In all our modes
of education and our attempts to improve the character of individ-
uals or communities, we proceed upon this principle. We never
think of working a permanent good in any other way than by
instilling the truth; nor do we ever dream that error would
answer our purpose equally well, if we could only succeed in
making it pass for truth. Any man would spurn the shameless
effrontery of the scorner who should tell him that the good of
society and of its individual members would be equally well pro-
moted by teaching them to lie and steal and murder, provided
we could only persuade them that these things were right. That
men can be elevated in their moral character, or in any way
benefited by being taught to receive error as truth, is as mon-
strous an absurdity and as palpable a contradiction to all the
lessons of experience as can be conceived. Man is so made as
to be swayed to good only by the truth. His moral nature can
not respond to any other influence.

i888

JOHN DONNF

(1573-1631)

JOHN DONNE, poet and preacher, (< carried some of his hearers
to heaven in holy raptures and enticed others by a sacred
art and persuasiveness to amend their lives.8 Born in Lon-
don in 1573, he was educated at Oxford first and afterwards at Cam-
bridge. Appointed chaplain in ordinary to James I., he became a royal
favorite, perhaps more for his poetry than for his sermons, though
both have been much admired. His theological indorsers decline to
give their unqualified approval to his verse, which they say is <( tainted
by the vice of his age," but he retains, nevertheless, the reputation
of sincere piety, profound learning, and wonderful persuasiveness as
a pulpit orator. He died March ist, 1631, like the <{ sated guest* of
Horace, his last words being <(I were miserable if I could not die."

MAN IMMORTAL, BODY AND SOUL
(From a Sermon on the Resurrection)

To CONSTITUTE a man there must be a body as well as a soul.
Nay, the immortality of the soul will not so well lie in
proof, without a resuming of the body. For, upon those
words of the Apostle, (< If there were no resurrection we were
the miserablest of all men," the school reasons reasonably: nat-
urally the soul and body are united; when they are separated
by death, it is contrary to nature, which nature still affects this
union; and consequently the soul is the less perfect for this sep-
aration: and it is not likely that the perfect natural state of the
soul, which is to be united to the body, should last but three or
four score years, and in most much less, and the unperfect state,
this is, the separation, should last eternally, forever: so that
either the body must be believed to live again, or the soul be-
lieved to die.

Never, therefore, dispute against thine own happiness; never
say, God asks the heart, that is, the soul, and therefore rewards
the soul, or punishes the soul, and hath no respect to the body.

JOHN DONNE ,889

Says Tertullian : " Never go about to separate the thoughts of the
heart from the college, from the fellowship of the body; all that
the soul does, it does in, and with, and by the body." And there-
fore, says he also, the body is washed in baptism, but it is that
the soul might be made clean; in all unctions, whether that
which was then in use in baptism, or that which was in use at
our transmigration and passage out of this world, the body was
anointed that the soul might be consecrated. Says Tertullian
still, the body is signed with the cross, that the soul might be
armed against temptations ; and again, " My body received the
body of Christ, that my soul might partake of his merits." He
extends it into many particulars, and sums up all thus, " These
two, body and soul, cannot be separated forever, which, while
they are together, concur in all that either of them do. " " Never
think it presumption," says St. Gregory, "to hope for that in
thyself which God admitted when he took thy nature upon him."
"And God hath made it, " says he, " more easy than so for thee
to believe it, because not only Christ himself, but such men as
thou art did rise at the resurrection of Christ." And therefore
when our bodies are dissolved and liquefied in the sea, putrefied
in the earth, resolved to ashes in the fire, macerated in the air,
make account that all the world is God's cabinet, and water, and
earth, and fire, and air, are the proper boxes in which God lays
up our bodies for the resurrection. Curiously to dispute against
our own resurrection is seditiously to dispute against the domin-
ion of Jesus, who is not made Lord by the resurrection, if he
have no subjects to follow him in the same way. We believe
him to be Lord, therefore let us believe his and our resurrection.

This blessed day, which we celebrate now, he rose; he rose so
as none before did, none after ever shall rise; he rose, others are
but raised. "Destroy this temple," says he, "and I will raise it";
I, without employing any other architect. "I lay down my life,"
says he; the Jews could not have killed him when he was alive;
if he were alive here now, the Jesuits could not kill him except
his being made Christ and Lord, an anointed King, have made
him more open to them. "I have power to lay it down," says
he, "and I have power to take it up again."

This day we celebrate his resurrection; this day let us cele-
brate our own. . . . Fulfill, therefore, that which Christ says,
"The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the
voice of the Son of God, and they that hear shall live." Be this
v — 1 19

!890 JOHN DONNE

that hour, be this thy first resurrection. Bless God's present
goodness for this now, and attend God's leisure for the other
resurrection hereafter. He that is "the first fruits of them that
slept,* Christ Jesus is awake; he dies no more, he sleeps no
more. He offered a sacrifice for thee, but he had that from thee
that he offered for thee; he was the first fruits, but the first
fruits of thy corn; doubt not of having that in the whole crop
which thou hast already in thy first fruits; that is, to have that
in thyself which thou hast in thy Savior. And what glory so-
ever thou hast had in this world, glory inherited from noble
ancestors, glory acquired by merit and service, glory purchased
by money and observation, what glory of beauty and proportion,
what glory of health and strength soever thou hast had in this
house of clay, (< the glory of the latter house shall be greater
than that of the former." To this glory, the God of this glory,
by glorious or inglorious ways, such as may most advance his
own glory, bring us in his time, for his Son Christ Jesus's sake.
Amen.

1891

JAMES R. DOOL1TTLE

(1815-1897)

(AMES R. DOOLITTLE was one of the Northwestern Republicans
who helped to decide the issues of 1 860-61 for war, and of
1866-70 for reconciliation with the South. They held with
Stephen A. Douglas that the South had constitutional rights which
ought to be respected, but that these rights were not to be consid-
ered at all as against the political unity of the Mississippi Valley.
Senator Doolittle represented what this element considered the logic
of the situation in declaring that (<by every law, human and divine,
the same national jurisdiction and the same flag should and must
govern the lower and the upper Mississippi.*

Born at Hampton, New York, in 1815, Mr. Doolittle graduated at
Geneva (now Hobart) College and removed to Wisconsin (1851) where
he was elected judge of the first judicial circuit and in 1856 United
States Senator. He remained in the Senate from 1857 to 1869, and
was one of the readiest and strongest speakers in it. He was a
member of the peace convention of 1861 and opposed all compro-
mises with the South, but as soon as the war was over, he advocated
all compromise measures, led the Northwest in the Greeley move-
ment, and made one of the most effective speeches in the Demo-
cratic convention which nominated Samuel J. Tilden. He died July
27th, 1897.

THE ATTITUDE OF THE WEST IN THE CIVIL WAR

(From a Speech Delivered in the United States Senate, February 24th, 1862,
Against Admitting Benjamin Stark as Senator from Oregon)

MR. STARK appears with a record under the seal of the State
of Oregon, giving him prima facie a right to a seat; he is
conceded to have the requisite age, residence, and citizen-
ship; but several of his constituents, said to be respectable citi-
zens, charge that he is an open and avowed secessionist, and
that the Governor who appointed him is a secessionist; and they
have forwarded their memorials to this body, accompanied by
ex parte statements upon oath to show that he has on various

JAMES R. DOOLITTLE

occasions declared that if there were to be war he would go and
help the South to fight; that Davis was fighting in a good cause;
that on occasions he has expressed sympathy with secessionists;
and on one occasion, on hearing of the news of the repulse of
the Union forces at Bull Run, he drank a toast to Beauregard,
as a witness believed. To all these charges he replies, in sub-
stance, that they are made by his bitter political opponents, and
that in many important particulars the declarations of his assail-
ants are false, without specifying wherein. . . .

If I understand this matter, he not only, as it would appear
from the declaration of witnesses, has advocated the doctrine
that States may constitutionally secede from the Union; but in
this letter he declared that nine States then, on the fifth of
June, 1 86 1, had already seceded; that our jurisdiction over them
had ceased; and, in substance, that we could only get back our
jurisdiction over those States by some negotiation. The nine
States referred to are, I suppose, South Carolina, Georgia, Ala-
bama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Florida, Texas, North Carolina, and
Tennessee. Now, he avows his loyalty and offers to take the
oath to support the Constitution of the United States. Loyalty
to what ? What does he mean by the Constitution of the United
States ? What does he mean by the United States ? Does he
mean to embrace all the States, or only such as Jefferson Davis
and his confederates have left us, only such as they have not
usurped to govern by military depotism ? Does the flag he is
willing to support bear for him only twenty-five stars, or is it
still full high advanced, bearing upon its ample folds thirty-four
stars — a star for every State? When he raises his hand before
Almighty God, and swears to support the Federal Constitution,
does he mean to support that Constitution and its supremacy
over Florida and Louisiana as well as over Oregon — at Pen-
sacola and at New Orleans, as well as at the mouth of the Co-
lumbia ?

We purchased Florida, gave $5,000,000 to get rid of a foreign
power between us and the Gulf of Mexico, and we have ex-
pended $40,000,000 to conquer and remove the Seminoles. Does
he mean to assert the national jurisdiction there ? We purchased
Louisiana of France, giving $15,000,000 to get control of the
Mississippi River and the Gulf of Mexico. Jefferson made the
purchase because he knew that if the mouth of that river were
held by a foreign power, it would be our eternal enemy. In

JAMES R. DOOLITTLE ,893

swearing to support the Constitution, does he mean to assert and
maintain its authority at New Orleans and to the mouth of the
Mississippi River ? Does the lower valley of that river belong
to the United States, whose Constitution he will swear to sup-
port, or does it belong to some foreign government ? That is
the question.

I speak earnestly, because I feel deeply on this question. I
belong to the great West. We know and feel the interests and
the necessities of our position. It is not only because our in-
stincts for empire are strong, and because our men are hardy
and brave, that we go into this struggle so earnestly. It is
because we know the grand design of this infernal conspiracy,
so long plotting the destruction of the Union, was first to set
up a military despotism over the States of the Gulf and on the
lower Mississippi; second, to compel the border slave States to
join them; and, third, by appealing to the Buchanan Democracy
of Pennsylvania, and offering to make that State their manufac-
turing State, to persuade her to join them according to what
was believed to be a pledge given by a Pennsylvanian in the
convention which nominated Buchanan in 1856. The traitors
believed they could accomplish all this, and then the great West
would be cut off from the East and from the South at the same
time, and by the same conspiracy, and be compelled to submit
to their dictation.

Sir, I repeat, we know our interests and our necessities. It
is not that our sons are any braver or our instincts for freedom
any stronger, that they go so earnestly into this struggle. They
know it is for existence. It is for them like a death struggle.
They know that by every law, human or divine, the same na-
tional jurisdiction and the same flag should govern and must
govern the lower and the upper Mississippi — the flag of liberty
and Union, or the flag of rebellion and despotism. There is and
there can be no neutrality or compromise. The one or the other
must prevail. We believe that justice, law, reason, and constitu-
tional liberty itself are all staked upon the issue of the struggle.
We go into it, therefore, with all the power and energy which
God has given us.

JAMES R. DOOLITTLE

IN FAVOR OF RE-UNION

(From a Speech Delivered in the National Democratic Convention — St.
Louis, June 28th, 1876)

I BELIEVE, as much as I believe in my existence, that if ever a
great responsibility rested upon a convention, it rests upon

this convention now and here. That responsibility is to take
such measures, to lay down such a platform, and to put upon it
such candidates as will make our success certain in the over-
throw of the party in power.

This party in power is a great and powerful party. Do not
let us deceive ourselves by supposing that it is weak. I know
that party. I have known it long and well. I have fought with
it, and I have fought against it. I know it inside and out,
through and through, and I tell you, gentlemen, that that party
for the last fifteen years has been a war party, imbued with
the spirit, accustomed to use the methods and practices which
surround military encampments, not only during the war, but
after the war had ended, in the reconstruction of the South.
Guided by that spirit, this party in power, after the war had
closed, — three years after the war had closed, almost, — I saw
them take, in the Senate of the United States and in the House
of Representatives, such action and such proceedings as could
only be justified by military ideas, acting not as civilians in the
administration of law, but as the leaders of military forces in
the organization of the States of the South, in order to gain an
unlimited control of both houses of Congress by a two-thirds'
majority, which could overrule the veto of the President. I saw
in the Senate of the United States, by the domination and des-
potic exercise of this power, a gentleman upon the floor of this
convention was driven from the Senate (I refer to Mr. Stockton
of New Jersey), and in order to get the vote which was neces-
sary to obtain that two-thirds majority and accomplish that pur-
pose, I saw one Senator, who from the committee reported in
favor of Mr. Stockton, break his pair with the colleague of the
Senator from New Jersey, confined by sickness at home.

By that act of revolution against law and all the usages of
the Senate, they usurped that two-thirds majority which has
ruled this country with military and despotic power from that
day to the present moment. Having acquired this two-thirds

JAMES R. DOOL1TTLE ,895

majority in both houses, trampling under its feet all the pledges
it made, and by which it obtained its lease of power, I saw that
party trample the Constitution under its feet. I saw them pass
military reconstruction acts by which ten States in this Union
and ten millions of people were robbed of every civil right of
liberty and property, and I saw them subjected to the absolute
unqualified domination of military dictators in time of peace.

You remember with what despotic and unrelenting power it
undertook to depose the President and put in his place a man
who would be more pliable to execute the behests of this des-
potic power at Washington. You know, too, how they persecuted
those Senators who preferred to obey their oaths rather than obey
the behests of this party. You saw, gentlemen, that same party by
telegraphic decrees entering with the regular army State legisla-
tures and organizing them against the law of the people. [Ap-
plause.] But I will not dwell on these things. I have said this
only for the purpose of making one further remark — that is, that
if any man in this country supposes that because this party lately
at Cincinnati, instead of putting forward its great recognized lead-
ers, have put forward Mr. Hayes, of Ohio, and Mr. Wheeler, of
New York, — who are very respectable gentlemen in the States
where they live, but are not much known elsewhere, — that this
party has changed its spirit, its genius, its ambitions, its despotic
centralizing tendencies, he is utterly mistaken. That party which
could crush Trumbull and Schurz and Henderson, and even Sum-
ner when he would not obey its behests, will take Hayes and
Wheeler in its hands like things of wax. They cannot resist nor
refuse to obey what that party shall decree. Therefore the re-
sponsibility rests upon you, gentlemen, and upon me, in our action
here, to put forward such a platform and such candidates that
we can wrest this Government from the hands of despotism and
centralization and extravagance and corruption, such as makes
the heart sick — corruption such as is our shame abroad and our
disgrace and humiliation at home.

I say, gentlemen, if we would do it, we must act here wisely,
not in the heat of passion. We must look beyond this chamber,
and all the heat and excitement of the present hour; we must
look beyond the excited crowds at the Lindell, the Southern, and
other hotels in this city. We must look to the great field where
the battle is to be fought and lost or won. As I said in the
beginning, gentlemen, I have been laboring hard to keep myself

JAMES R. DOOLITTLE

cool, both inside and out, in order that if I have any judgment
to give, any opinion to express, or any advice to offer upon this
great and important question, it may come as the opinion and
advice and suggestion of a brain that is cool and a breast that
is excited with nothing but love for the Union and love for the
country. [Cheers.] Gentlemen, let me say, in my brief period
in public affairs, — and not so very brief, either, for this is the
tenth presidential canvass in which I have taken and am to take
an active part [Applause], — I have learned — and learned what I
did not know in the beginning — that when conventions assemble
in great numbers, and the friends of candidates are excited, they
believe for the moment, when the result is announced, that the
victory is already won. I have sadly found myself mistaken
when we came to the field of battle. Four times, fellow-citizens,
four times have I attended a convention since the close of the
war — conventions which had the same purpose and spirit which
we now have — I mean to restore the Union of the States upon
the platform of fraternity, liberty, and equality to all the States
and to all the citizens of the States, to restore that Union, not
only the Union which we established by our conquering, but to
establish that Union in our heart of hearts [Applause], away
down deep in all the affections and interests and aspirations of
the whole people, North and South, black and white. Well do
I remember the first at Philadelphia in 1866. I recognize here
many familiar faces which met me there on that great occasion.
They came together at Philadelphia ten years ago, from all the
States of the Union. It was the first reunion after the Civil
War. They came to shake hands together literally over the
* bloody chasm,* and when their united thanks went up to Al-
mighty God that the war was over, that peace had come, that
no more sons and fathers and brothers were to go down to bat-
tle and to death, that sweet peace had come, and come to stay
[Cheers], there was a joy in that convention unutterable. Ten
thousand men and women — strong men — in that convention,
filled with an exultation which words could not express, gave
way to every demonstration of joy. They wept, they embraced,
and then, recovering themselves, they cheered and shouted —
such cheers and shouts as go up from conquering armies when
great fields are won. [Cheers.] But, fellow-citizens, though the
object with which we met, the ideas to which we gave utterance,
the platform we adopted, and all that was done to restore the

JAMES R. DOOLITTLE ,897

former — and let me say to you in a single word, we failed in
my opinion because at the city of New York we did not properly
organize the forces for the victory. [Applause.] So badly was
the Democratic party beaten in 1868 that in 1872, as if by unan-
imous consent, they gave out their word to the Liberal Repub-
cans, — such Senators as Trumbull, Schurz, and others, — that if
they would take the lead, if they would lay down a platform
consistent with the constitutional views entertained by the great
Democratic party and put candidates upon it, that party pledged
its honor that, when assembled in convention, it would indorse
and sustain them and aid them in the contest. You remember
how well that pledge was kept, and I say to the Liberal Repub-
licans, if there are any within the sound of my voice, or if any-
thing that I say here shall reach them elsewhere — I say to the
Liberal Republicans, and to all the Liberal Republicans, that
they have been placed under a debt and obligation of gratitude
to the Democratic party [Cheers] that they ought never to for-
get, and which they can never so well repay as by uniting with
the Democratic party now in the coming contest. [Cheers.]

1898

THE EARL OF DORSET

(1591-1652)

IHE age of Shakespeare, Bacon, and Raleigh, of Cromwell,
Hampden, and Milton, is one of the most extraordinary in
history — the most remarkable in the history of England, and,
excepting only the revolutionary periods of France and America, the
most significant in modern times. It has not yet been explained
scientifically, and it may not be for another century to come. But
when it is explained, such speeches as that made by the Earl of Dor-
set against Prynne will be understood as indexes of the times and
arguments of the future. In the eloquence of his denunciation of
Prynne, in his biting sarcasm, in the delicacy of the irony with which
he works his way towards his climax — a climax in which, as one of
the lords of the Star Chamber, he announced his vote in favor of
branding Prynne in the forehead, cropping his ears, and slitting his
nose, Dorset stood for everything which sent Charles I. to the block,
as Prynne, for the time being at least, represented fully all the forces
of reaction against the aestheticism and tyrannical spirit of the court.
There is no question of the corruption against which Prynne pro-
tested in his < Histrio-Mastix, or a Scourge for Stage-Players,* but the
corruption of the stage was only an incident of that general loss of
moral sense among the governing classes which in its reactions
forced Puritanism among those who, while they were making intel-
lectual and moral progress, were as yet but at the beginning of both.
Dorset stands for the highest culture of the court. He was one of
the literary Sackvilles, aesthetes who were shocked by the vulgarity
and bad taste of such Puritans as Prynne. Cromwell himself from
their standpoint was a mere vulgarian, and Dorset would undoubtedly
have voted to pillory him and slit his nose had he stood in Prynne's
place. But it was only a few years until reaction against all that
Dorset stood for had produced Milton and Cromwell. It is always so
in history for those who having taken the coat demand the cloak
also. Had not Prynne's ears been cropped in the pillory, there might
never have been a Milton or a Cromwell. Yet it is said that Milton's
contempt for Prynne was as great as that of Dorset, and that he
sneered at him for the marks of his martyrdom.

THE EARL OF DORSET

IN FAVOR OF SLITTING PRYNNE'S NOSE

1899

(Delivered in the Star Chamber in February 1643, against William Prynne,
for Writing and Publishing < Histrio-Mastix, or a Scourge for Stage-
Play ers>)

SUCH swarms of murmurers as this day disclose themselves —
are they not fearful symptoms of this sick and diseased
time ? Ought we not rather with more justice and fear ap-
prehend those heavy judgments which this minor prophet Prynne
hath denounced against this land for tolerating different things,
to fall upon us for suffering them, like those mutineers against
Moses and Aaron, as not fit to breathe ? My lords, it is high
time to make a lustration to purge the air. And will justice
ever bring a more fit oblation than this Achan ? Adam, in the
beginning, put names on creatures correspondent to their natures.
The title he hath given this book is (< Histrio-Mastix, " or, rather, as
Mr. Secretary Cook observed, <(Anthropo-mastix w ; but that comes
not home ; it deserves a far higher title — (< Damnation, w in plain
English, of prince, prelacy, peers, and people. Never did Pope in
Cathedra, assisted with the spirit of infallibility, more positively
and more peremptorily condemn heretics and heresy than this
doth mankind. Lest any partial auditor may think me trans-
ported with passion, to judge of the base liveries he bestoweth
upon court and courtiers, I shall do that which a judge ought to
do, viz., assist the prisoner at the bar. Give me leave to remem-
ber what Mr. Attorney let fall the other day. — I will take hold
of it for the gentleman's advantage, — that this gentleman had
no mission; if he had had a mission it would have qualified the
offense. Our blessed Savior, when he conversed in this world,
chose Apostles whom he sent after him into the world, saying:
"Ite, predicate* to show the way of salvation to mankind. Faith,
hope, and charity were the steps of this Jacob's ladder to as-
cend heaven by. The devil, who hates every man upon earth,
played the divine, cited books, wrought miracles; and he will
have his disciples, too, as he had his confessors and martyrs.
My lords, this contempt, disloyalty, and despair are the ropes
which this emissary lets down to his great master's kingdom for
a general service. My lords, as the tenor of their commission
was different, so are their ways. These holy men advanced their

THE EARL OF DORSET

cause in former times by meekness, humility, patience to bear
with the weakness and infirmities of their brethren; they taught
obedience to magistracy, even for conscience' sake; they divided
not their estates into factions; they detracted from none; they
sought the salvation of men's souls, and guided their bodies and
affections answerably; they gave to Caesar the things that were
Caesar's; if princes were bad, they prayed for them; if good, they
praised God for them; however, they bore with them. This was
the doctrine of the primitive Church, and this they did. I appeal
to my lords, they that have read this book, if Mr. Prynne has
not, with breach of faith, discharged his great Master's end. My
lords, when God had made all his works, he looked upon them
and saw that they were good.

This gentleman, the devil having put spectacles on his nose,
says that all is bad; no recreation, vocation, no condition good;
neither sex, magistrate, ordinance, custom, divine and human,
things animate, inanimate, all, my lords, wrapt up in massa dam-
nata, all in the ditch of destruction. Here, my lords, we may
observe the great prudence of this prince of darkness, a soul so
fraught of malice, so void of humanity, that it gorgeth out all
the filth, impiety, and iniquity that the discontent of this age
doth contract against the State and Church. But it may be that
some follower of his will say it was the pride and wickedness
of the times that prompted him to this work, and set his zeal,
through tenderness of conscience, to write this book. My lords,
you may know an unclean bird by his feathers; let him be un-
plumed, unmasked, pull off the deceitful wizard, and see how he
appeareth: this brittle-conscienced brother, that perhaps starts at
the sight of the corner-cap, sweats at the surplus, swoons at the
sign of the cross, and will rather die than put on woman's ap-
parel to save his life; yet, he is so zealous for the advancement
of his babel, that he invents legions, coins new statutes, corrupts
and misapplies texts with false interpretations, dishonors all men,
defames all women, equivocates lies! And yet this man is a
holy man, a pillar of the Church! Do you, Mr. Prynne, find
fault with the (< court and courtiers' habit, silk and satin divines * ?
I may say of you, you are all purple within, all pride, malice,
and all disloyalty. You are a tumbler, who is commonly squint-
eyed; you look one way and run another way; though you
seemed by the title of your book to scourge stage-plays, yet it

THE EARL OP DORSET ,9OI

was to make people believe that there was an apostasy in the
magistrates. But, my lords, admit all this to be venial and par-
donable, this pigmy groweth a giant, and invades the gods them-
selves. Where we enjoy this felicity under a gracious prince,
with so much advantage as to have the light of the Gospel,
whilst others are kept in darkness, the happiness of the recrea-
tions to the health of the body, the blessed government we now
have. When did ever Church so flourish, and State better pros-
per? And since the plagues happened, none have been sent
among us such as this caterpillar is. What vein hath opened
his anger ? Or, who hath let out his fury ? When did ever
man see such a quietus as in these days ? Yet in this golden
age is there not a Shimei amongst us, that curseth the anointed
of the Lord ? So puffed with pride, now can the beams of the
sun thaw his frozen heart, and this man appeareth yet. And
now, my lords, pardon me, as he hath wounded his Majesty in
his head, power, and government, and her Majesty, his Majesty's
dear consort, our royal Queen, and my gracious mistress, I can
spare him no longer, I am at his heart. Oh! quantum! If any
cast infamous aspersions and censures on our Queen and her
innocency, silence would prove impiety rather than ingratitude
in me, that do daily contemplate her virtues; I will praise
her for that which is her own; she drinks at the springhead,
whilst others take up at the stream. I shall not alter the great
truth that hath been said, with a heart as full of devotion, as a
tongue of eloquence, the other day, as it came to his part [mean-
ing Sir John Finch]. My lords, her own example to all virtues,
the candor of her life, is a more powerful motive than all pre-
cepts, than the severest of laws; no hand of fortune nor of power
can hurt her; her heart is full of honor, her soul of chastity;
majesty, mildness, and meekness are so married together, and so
impaled in her, that where the one begetteth admiration, the
other love; her soul of that excellent temper, so harmoniously
composed; her zeal in the ways of God unparalleled; her affec-
tions to her Lord so great, if she offend him it is no sunset in
her anger; in all her actions and affections so elective and judi-
cious, and a woman so constant for the redemption of all her
sex from all imputations, which men (I know not how justly)
sometimes lay on them; a princess, for the sweetness of her dis-
position, and for compassion, always relieving some oppressed

THE EARL OF DORSET

soul, or rewarding some deserving subject; were all such saints
as she, I think the Roman Church were not to be condemned:
on my conscience, she troubleth the ghostly father with nothing,
but that she hath nothing to trouble him withal. And so when
I have said all in her praise, I can never say enough of her
excellency; in the relation whereof an orator cannot flatter, nor
poet lie: yet is there not Doeg among us, notwithstanding all
the tergiversations his counsel hath used at the bar ? I can bet-
ter prove that he meant the King and Queen by that infamous
Nero, etc., than he proves players go to hell. But Mr. Prynne,
your iniquity is full, it runs over, and judgment is come; it is
not Mr. Attorney that calls for judgment against you, but it is all
mankind; they are the parties grieved, and they call for judg-
ment.

Mr. Prynne, I do declare you to be a schism maker in the
Church, a sedition sower in the commonwealth, a wolf in sheep's
clothing; in a word, omnium malorum nequissimus. I shall fine
you ten thousand pounds sterling, which [addressing the other
lords] is more than he is worth, yet less than he deserveth; I
will not set him at liberty no more than a plagued man or a mad
dog, who though he cannot bite, he will foam; he is so far from
being a sociable soul that he is not a rational soul; he is fit to
live in dens with such beasts of prey as wolves and tigers like
himself. Therefore, I do condemn him to perpetual imprisonment
as those monsters that are no longer fit to live among men, nor
to see light. Now for corporal punishment, my lords, whether I
should burn him in the forehead, or slit him in the nose ? He
that was guilty of murder was marked in a place where he might
be seen, as Cain was. I should be loath he should escape with
his ears, for he may get a periwig, which he now so much in-
veighs against, and so hide them, or force his conscience to make
use of his unlovely love-locks on both sides. Therefore, I would
have him branded in the forehead, slit in the nose, and his ears
cropped too. My lords, I now come to this ordure; I can give no
better term to it, to burn it, as it is common in other countries,
or otherwise we shall bury Mr. Prynne and suffer his ghost to
walk. I shall, therefore, concur to the burning of the book; but
let there be a proclamation made, that whosoever shall keep
any of the books in his hands and not bring them to some pub-
lic magistrate to be burnt in the fire, let them fall under the

THE EARL OF DORSET

sentence of this court; for if they fell into wise men's hands, or
good men's hands, that were no fear, but if among the common
sort, and into weak men's hands, then tenderness of conscience
will work something. Let this sentence be recorded, and let it
be sent to the library of Sion [meaning a college in London],
whither a woman, by her will, will allow Mr. Prynne's work to
be sent.

[The sentence against Prynne was executed the seventh and tenth days of
May following.]

1904

DANIEL DOUGHERTY

(1826-1889)

DANIEL DOUGHERTY was for almost a generation one of the
favorite orators of Philadelphia. He was a Democrat in
politics and made the speech nominating Hancock, which
fixed on him the title of <( Hancock the Superb. » He also put Cleve-
land in nomination at the St. Louis convention of 1888. He died
September 5th, 1889. His reputation as an orator was national, but
his speeches have never been collected, and as he did not attempt a
congressional career, it is possible that he will become one more
addition to the already long list of those who are praised as (< silver-
tongued® by their generation, without transmitting themselves ade-
quately to posterity.

« HANCOCK THE SUPERB »

(Delivered in the Democratic National Convention at Cincinnati, June 1880,
Nominating Winfield Scott Hancock for the Presidency)

I PROPOSE to present to the thoughtful consideration of the con-
vention the name of one who, though on the field of battle
he was styled the * The Superb, B won still nobler renown as
a military governor, whose first act when in command of Louisi-
ana and Texas was to salute the Constitution by proclaiming
that military rule shall ever be subservient to the civil power.
The plighted word of the soldier was made good by the acts of
the statesman. I nominate one whose name, suppressing all fac-
tions, will be alike acceptable to the North and to the South —
a name that will thrill the Republic; the name of a man who, if
nominated, will crush the last embers of sectional strife — a man
whose name will be hailed as the dawning of a day of per-
petual brotherhood. With him we can fling away our shields,
and wage an aggressive war. We can appeal to the supreme
tribunal of the American people against the corruption of the
Republican party and its untold violations of constitutional lib-
erty. With him as our chieftain, the bloody banner of the

DANIEL DOUGHERTY

Republicans will fall from their palsied grasp. Oh, my country-
men, in this supreme moment the destinies of the Republic are
at stake and the liberties of the people are imperiled. The peo-
ple hang breathless on your deliberation. Take heed! Make no
misstep! I nominate one who can carry every Southern State,
and who can carry Pennsylvania, Indiana, Connecticut, New Jer-
sey, and New York — the soldier statesman, with a record as
stainless as his sword, Winfield Scott Hancock, of Pennsylvania.
If elected, he will take his seat,
v — 1 20

1906

FREDERICK DOUGLAS

(1817-1895)

FREDERICK DOUGLAS gained prominence at a time when it was
still supposed by many that any considerable infusion of
African blood would prevent intellectual development. It
might be inferred, therefore, that his reputation as an orator gained
under such circumstances is due in part to the false idea that he
was a prodigy rather than to the merits of his oratory. If this be
true, it is not largely true, for in such speeches as his < Plea for Free
Speech,* in Boston, he shows not merely deep feeling, but ability to
master it completely; to give it sustained, connected, and calm ex-
pression, and in his climax to exhibit himself, not as the special
advocate of a race, but as the champion of humanity. He was born
in Maryland in 1817. His father was a white man, but his mother
was a negro slave, and, following the condition of his mother, he was
a slave also. He escaped from his master in 1838, and in 1841 made
a speech before the Antislavery Society of Massachusetts, at Nan-
tucket, so eloquent that he was employed to lecture as the society's
agent. He had learned to read while a slave, and at this period
was a man of considerable education. Between 1850 and 1860 he was
not in harmony with the Garrison abolitionists, and the paper he pub-
lished at Rochester is frequently mentioned with disapproval in the
Liberator. After the Civil War he held office as United States Mar-
shal and Recorder of Deeds for the District of Columbia, and as
Minister to Hayti. He died February aoth, 1895.

A PLEA FOR FREE SPEECH IN BOSTON

(Delivered in Music Hall, Boston, in 1860 — Reported in the Liberator of
December 4th, 1860)

BOSTON is a. great city — and Music Hall has a fame almost
as extensive as that of Boston. Nowhere more than here
have the principles of human freedom been expounded.
But for the circumstances already mentioned, it would seem
almost presumption for me to say anything here about those

FREDERICK DOUGLAS

1907

principles. And yet, even here, in Boston, the moral atmosphere
is dark and heavy. The principles of human liberty, even if
correctly apprehended, find but limited support in this hour of
trial. The world moves slowly, and Boston is much like the
world. We thought the principle of free speech was an accom-
plished fact. Here, if nowhere else, we thought the right of
the people to assemble and to express their opinion was secure.
Dr. Channing had defended the right, Mr. Garrison had prac-
tically asserted the right, and Theodore Parker had maintained
it with steadiness and fidelity to the last.

But here we are to-day contending for what we thought was
gained years ago. The mortifying and disgraceful fact stares us
in the face, that though Faneuil Hall and Bunker Hill Monu-
ment stand, freedom of speech is struck down. No lengthy
detail of facts is needed. They are already notorious; far more
so than will be wished ten years hence.

The world knows that last Monday a meeting assembled to
discuss the question : <( How Shall Slavery Be Abolished ? }> The
world also knows that that meeting was invaded, insulted, cap-
tured, by a mob of gentlemen, and thereafter broken up and
dispersed by the order of the mayor, who refused to protect it,
though called upon to do so. If this had been a mere outbreak
of passion and prejudice among the baser sort, maddened by
rum and hounded on by some wily politician to serve some im-
mediate purpose, — a mere exceptional affair, — it might be allowed
to rest with what has already been said. But the leaders of the
mob were gentlemen. They were men who pride themselves
upon their respect for law and order.

These gentlemen brought their respect for the law with them
and proclaimed it loudly while in the very act of breaking the
law. Theirs was the law of slavery. The law of free speech
and the law for the protection of public meetings they trampled
under foot, while they greatly magnified the law of slavery.

The scene was an instructive one. Men seldom see such a
blending of the gentleman with the rowdy, as was shown on that
occasion. It proved that human nature is very much the same,
whether in tarpaulin or broadcloth. Nevertheless, when gentle-
men approach us in the character of lawless and abandoned
loafers, — assuming for the moment their manners and tempers, —
they have themselves to blame if they are estimated below their
quality.

1908

FREDERICK DOUGLAS

No right was deemed by the fathers of the Government more
sacred than the right of speech. It was in their eyes, as in the
eyes of all thoughtful men, the great moral renovator of society
and government. Daniel Webster called it a homebred right, a
fireside privilege. Liberty is meaningless where the right to
utter one's thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist. That, of
all rights, is the dread of tyrants. It is the right which they
first of all strike down. They know its power. Thrones, domin-
ions, principalities, and powers, founded in injustice and wrong,
are sure to tremble, if men are allowed to reason of righteous-
ness, temperance, and of a judgment to come in their presence.
Slavery cannot tolerate free speech. Five years of its exercise
would banish the auction block and break every chain in the
South. They will have none of it there, for they have the
power. But shall it be so here ?

Even here in Boston, and among the friends of freedom, we
hear two voices: one denouncing the mob that broke up our
meeting on Monday as a base and cowardly outrage; and an-
other, deprecating and regretting the holding of such a meeting,
by such men, at such a time. We are told that the meeting was
ill-timed, and the parties to it unwise.

Why, what is the matter with us ? Are we going to palliate
and excuse a palpable and flagrant outrage on the right of
speech, by implying that only a particular description of per-
sons should exercise that right ? Are we, at such a time, when
a great principle has been struck down, to quench the moral in-
dignation which the deed excites, by casting reflections upon
those on whose persons the outrage has been committed ? After
all the arguments for liberty to which Boston has listened for
more than a quarter of a century, has she yet to learn that the
time to assert a right is the time when the right itself is called
in question, and that the men of all others to assert it are the
men to whom the right has been denied ?

It would be no vindication of the right of speech to prove
that certain gentlemen of great distinction, eminent for their
learning and ability, are allowed to freely express their opinions
on all subjects — including the subject of slavery. Such a vindi-
cation would need, itself, to be vindicated. It would add insult to
injury. Not even an old-fashioned abolition meeting could vindi-
cate that right in Boston just now. There can be no right of
speech where any man, however lifted up, or however humble,

FREDERICK DOUGLAS ,9O9

however young, or however old, is overawed by force, and com-
pelled to suppress his honest sentiments.

Equally clear is the right to hear. To suppress free speech
is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well
as those of the speaker. It is just as criminal to rob a man of
his right to speak and hear as it would be to rob him of his
money. I have no doubt that Boston will vindicate this right.
But in order to do so, there must be no concessions to the
enemy. When a man is allowed to speak because he is rich and
powerful, it aggravates the crime of denying the right to the
poor and humble.

The principle must rest upon its own proper basis. And un-
til the right is accorded to the humblest as freely as to the most
exalted citizen, the government of Boston is but an empty name,
and its freedom a mockery. A man's right to speak does not
depend upon where he was born or upon his color. The simple
quality of manhood is the solid basis of the right — and there
let it rest forever.

STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS

(1813-1861)

IENRY CLAY hoped he might never live to see the Civil War,
and died seeing it inevitable. Stephen A. Douglas, who at-
tempted to take his place as a pacificator, lived to see it
begin, and died, sternly determined to accept for himself and for all
those he could influence the issues he had striven to avoid.

To go over the measures of home and foreign policy by which it
was sought to postpone the crisis of the struggle for sectional suprem-
acy will never be a pleasant duty, and it is only necessary to point
out here that as Clay stood for the traditional foreign policy of Wash-
ington and Jefferson, — the maintenance of our "splendid isolation*
and the development of the nation from within, — Douglas stood for
the distraction of attention from domestic affairs to expansion and
aggressive advance abroad. When Clay's influence as the representa-
tive of what had been a (< pivotal border State * waned after the fruit-
less Compromise of 1850, Douglas, as the representative of the growing
power of the <( border States * north of the Ohio, forced himself into
leadership as the spokesman of <( Young America * and of progres-
sive ideas, which were interpreted by some of his followers to mean
the conquest of the territory remaining to Mexico, the seizure of
Cuba and the Central American States, and the annexation of Can-
ada. These exuberances of the theory of <( Manifest Destiny * Douglas
repudiated, but for a time it was hoped by some that in the discus-
sion of them there would be a cessation of the agitation for disunion,
now carried on by both the Secessionists of the Gulf States and the
terribly determined idealists of New England. Any one who reads
now the burning words in which Wendell Phillips, under the prompt-
ings of a genius as fiery as that of Desmoulins and as stern as that
of Danton, denounced "the league with death and the covenant with
hell,* will see how sadly futile was the hope that Douglas enter-
tained— that Buchanan expressed in one of his messages at a time
when civil war had virtually begun — the hope that any mere "policy*
can change the logic of events or alter the reality of "manifest des-
tiny* involved in the accumulation of moral and intellectual forces
from generation to generation, from country to country, from age to
age.

Douglas was hailed by enthusiastic thousands as a very great man.
He will always be remembered as one of the leading actors in the

STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS.

Photogravure after Buttress Design from a Photograph by Brady.

STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS ,9,,

prologue of the greatest tragedy of American history. But the only
verdict possible on his career as a whole is that he mistook the logic
of history and so failed, in spite of his great powers, to control the
logic of events.

He was a man of remarkable natural ability, hardly surpassed as
a political debater, yet an unequal match for Lincoln, because of a
lack of the subtlety which is the most characteristic of all Lincoln's
qualities. In the great debate of 1858, Mr. Lincoln, by his knowledge
of the underlying forces of politics, was able to force issues far more
radically and effectively through the speeches of Mr. Douglas than
through his own. Lincoln's masterly habit of self-suppression was
hardly suspected at the time, and few then could have supposed that
Douglas, accustomed to use language to express his thoughts, was
matched against a greater politician than Talleyrand, — one who knew
the last great secret of politics — that of going twain willingly with
those who had compelled him to go an unwilling mile.

Born in Vermont and bred to the trade of a cabinet maker, Doug-
las removed to Illinois in his youth and educated himself to such
advantage that after giving up his trade and being admitted to the
bar, he soon became recognized as one of the most effective lawyers
of the State. He was elected Judge of the Supreme Court of Illinois
in 1841. From 1843 to 1847 he served in the House of Representa-
tives, and in the United States Senate from 1847 to 1861. He began
to come into prominence just as Webster, Clay, Calhoun, and Benton
were yielding their places at the front. Lewis Cass had been dis-
credited by defeat, and Douglas easily took his place as the Western
leader and Presidential candidate of those Democrats who still hoped
to postpone the issue against slavery. As the representative of these,
Douglas appealed for the Presidency on a theory which his opponents
called « squatter sovereignty }) — the doctrine that the people of a ter-
ritory had a right to decide for themselves in adopting their consti-
tution, whether they would have slavery or any other institution not
prohibited by the Federal Constitution. The logic of this position
seemed to be irrefragable, but it left William Lloyd Garrison and
Wendell Phillips out of consideration, and so in his last speeches,
made in 1860 and 1861, Mr. Douglas declared against the extreme
logic of <( local self-government" and in favor of any force necessary
to prevent the Gulf States from establishing a confederation to con-
trol the Lower Mississippi and the ports of the Gulf of Mexico.
Without doubt, the "Douglas Democrats* of 1861 held the decisive
balance of power, and it is hardly too much to say of him that, de-
feated and heartbroken, Douglas did no less to prevent the success
of the Southern States in their attempt at secession than Mr. Lincoln
himself. W. V. B.

STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS

REPLY TO LINCOLN

(In the Joint Debate, at Freeport, Illinois, June i7th, 1858)

Ladies and Gentlemen: —

I AM glad that at last I have brought Mr. Lincoln to the con-
clusion that he had better define his position on certain polit-
ical questions to which I called his attention at Ottawa. He
there showed no disposition, no inclination, to answer them. I
did not present idle questions for him to answer merely for my
gratification. I laid the foundation for those interrogatories by
showing that they constituted the platform of the party whose
nominee he is for the Senate. I did not presume that I had
the right to catechise him as I saw proper, unless I showed that
his party, or a majority of it, stood upon the platform and were
in favor of the propositions upon which my questions were based.
I desired simply to know, inasmuch as he had been nominated
as the first, last, and only choice of his party, whether he con-
curred in the platform which that party had adopted for its
government. In a few moments I will proceed to review the
answers which he has given to these interrogatories; but in
order to relieve his anxiety, I will first respond to these which
he has presented to me. Mark you, he has not presented inter-
rogatories which have ever received the sanction of the party
with which I am acting, and hence he has no other foundation
for them than his own curiosity.

First, he desires to know if the people of Kansas shall form a
constitution by means entirely proper and unobjectionable, and
ask admission into the Union as a State, before they have the
requisite population for a Member of Congress, whether I will
vote for that admission. Well, now, I regret exceedingly that he
did not answer that interrogatory himself before he put it to
me, in order that we might understand, and not be left to infer
on which side he is. Mr. Trumbull, during the last session of
Congress, voted from the beginning to the end against the ad-
mission of Oregon, although a free State, because she had not
the requisite population for a Member of Congress. Mr. Trum-
bull would not consent, under any circumstances, to let a State,
free or slave, come into the Union until it had the requisite pop-
ulation. As Mr. Trumbull is in the field fighting for Mr. Lin-
coln, I would like to have Mr. Lincoln answer his own question,

STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS

1913

and tell me whether he is fighting Trumbull on that issue or
not. But I will answer his question. In reference to Kansas, it
is my opinion that as she has population enough to constitute a
slave State, she has people enough for a free State. I will not
make Kansas an exceptionable case to the other States of the
Union. I hold it to be a sound rule of universal application to
require a Territory to contain the requisite population for a Mem-
ber of Congress before it is admitted as a State into the Union.
I made that proposition in the Senate in 1856, and I renewed it
during the last session in a bill providing that no Territory of the
United States should form a constitution and apply for admission,
until it had the requisite population. On another occasion I pro-
posed that neither Kansas or any other territory should be ad-
mitted until it had the requisite population. Congress did not
adopt any of my propositions containing this general rule, but did
make an exception of Kansas. I will stand by that exception.
Either Kansas must come in as a free State, with whatever pop-
ulation she may have, or the rule must be applied to all the
other territories alike. I therefore answer at once, that it having
been decided that Kansas has people enough for a slave State, I
hold that she has enough for a free State. I hope Mr. Lincoln
is satisfied with my answer; and now I would like to get his
answer to his own interrogatory — whether or not he will vote to
admit Kansas before she has the requisite population. I want to
know whether he will vote to admit Oregon before that territory
has the requisite population. Mr. Trumbull will not, and the
same reason that commits Mr. Trumbull against the admission of
Oregon commits him against Kansas, even if she should apply
for admission as a free State. If there is any sincerity, any
truth, in the argument of Mr. Trumbull in the Senate against
the admission of Oregon, because she had not 93,420 people,
although her population was larger than that of Kansas, he
stands pledged against the admission of both Oregon and Kansas,
until they have 93,420 inhabitants. I would like Mr. Lincoln to
answer this question. I would like him to take his own medi-
cine. If he differ with Mr. Trumbull, let him answer his argu-
ment against the admission of Oregon, instead of poking ques-
tions at me.

The next question propounded to me by Mr. Lincoln is: Can
the people of the territory in any lawful way, against the wishes
of any citizen of the United States, exclude slavery from their

1914

STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS

limits prior to the formation of a State constitution ? I answer
emphatically, as Mr. Lincoln has heard me answer a hundred
times from every stump in Illinois, that in my opinion the people
of a territory can, by lawful means, exclude slavery from their
limits prior to the formation of a State constitution. Mr. Lincoln
knew that I had answered that question over and over again.
He heard me argue the Nebraska Bill on that principle all over
the State in 1854, in 1855, and in 1856, and he has no excuse for
pretending to be in doubt as to my position on that question.
It matters not what way the Supreme Court may hereafter de-
cide as to the abstract question whether slavery may or may not
go into a territory under the Constitution; the people have the
lawful means to introduce it or exclude it as they please, for the
reason that slavery cannot exist a day or an hour anywhere, un-
less it is supported by local police regulations. Those police
regulations can only be established by the local legislature; and
if the people are opposed to slavery, they will elect representa-
tives to that body who will by unfriendly legislation effectually
prevent the introduction of it into their midst. If, on the con-
trary, they are for it, their legislation will favor its extension.
Hence, no matter what the decision of the Supreme Court may
be on that abstract question, still the right of the people to make
a slave Territory or a free Territory is perfect and complete
under the Nebraska Bill. I hope Mr. Lincoln deems my answer
satisfactory on that point.

In this connection, I will notice the charge which he has in-
troduced in relation to Mr. Chase's amendment. I thought that I
had chased that amendment out of Mr. Lincoln's brain at Ottawa,
but it seems that still haunts his imagination, and he is not yet
satisfied. I had supposed that he would be ashamed to press
that question further. He is a lawyer, and has been a Member
of Congress, and has occupied his time and amused you by tell-
ing you about parliamentary proceeding. He ought to have
known better than to try to palm off his miserable impositions
upon this intelligent audience. The Nebraska Bill provided that
the legislative power and authority of the said Territory should
extend to all rightful subjects of legislation, consistent with the
organic act and the Constitution of the United States. It did
not make any exception as to slavery, but gave all the power
that it was possible for Congress to give without violating the
Constitution to the territorial legislature, with no exception or

STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS

1915

limitation on the subject of slavery at all. The language of that
bill which I have quoted gave the full power and the full
authority over the subject of slavery, affirmatively and nega-
tively, to introduce it or exclude it, so far as the Constitution of
the United States would permit. What more could Mr. Chase
give by his amendment ? Nothing. He offered his amendment
for the identical purpose for which Mr. Lincoln is using it, to
enable demagogues in the country to try and deceive the people.

His amendment was to this effect. It provided that the leg-
islature should have the power to exclude slavery; and General
Cass suggested: "Why not give the power to introduce as well as
exclude?* The answer was: "They have the power already in
the bill to do both. M Chase was afraid his amendment would be
adopted if he put the alternative proposition, and so make it fair
both ways, but would not yield. He offered it for the purpose of
having it rejected. He offered it, as he has himself avowed over
and over again, simply to make capital out of it for the stump.
He expected that it would be capital for small politicians in the
country, and that they would make an effort to deceive the peo-
ple with it; and he was not mistaken, for Lincoln is carrying out
the plan admirably. Lincoln knows that the Nebraska Bill, with-
out Chase's amendment, gave all the power which the Constitu-
tion would permit. Could Congress confer any more ? Could
Congress go beyond the Constitution of the country ? We gave
all a full grant with no exception in regard to slavery one way
or the other. We left that question, as we left all others, to be
decided by the people for themselves, just as they pleased. I will
not occupy my time on this question. I have argued it before all
over Illinois. I have argued it in this beautiful city of Freeport;
I have argued it in the North, the South, the East, and the West,
avowing the same sentiments and the same principles. I have
not been afraid to avow my sentiments up here for fear I would
be trotted down into Egypt.

The third question which Mr. Lincoln presented is : w If the
Supreme Court of the United States shall decide that a State of
this Union cannot exclude slavery from its own limits, will I
submit to it ? * I am amazed that Lincoln should ask such a
question. WA schoolboy knows better. * Yes, a schoolboy does
know better. Mr. Lincoln's object is to cast an imputation upon
the Supreme Court. He knows that there never was but one
man in America, claiming any degree of intelligence or decency,

1916

STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS

who ever for a moment pretended such a thing. It is true that
the Washington Union, in an article published on the seventeenth
of last December, did put forth that doctrine, and I denounced
the article on the floor of the Senate in a speech which Mr. Lin-
coln now pretends was against the President. The Union had
claimed that slavery had a right to go into the free States, and
that any provisions in the Constitution or laws of the Free States
to the contrary were null and void. I denounced it in the Sen-
ate, as I said before, and I was the first man who did. Lincoln's
friends, Trumbull and Seward and Hale and Wilson and the
whole black Republican side of the Senate were silent. They
left it to me to denounce it. And what was the reply made to
me on that occasion ? Mr. Toombs, of Georgia, got up and un-
dertook to lecture me on the ground that I ought not to have
deemed the article worthy of notice and ought not to have re-
plied to it; that there was not one man, woman, or child south
of the Potomac, in any slave State, who did not repudiate any
such pretension. Mr. Lincoln knows that that reply was made
on the spot, and yet now he asks this question. He might as
well ask me : <( Suppose Mr. Lincoln should steal a horse, would
you sanction it ? * and it would be as genteel in me to ask him,
in the event he stole a horse, what ought to be done with him.
He casts an imputation upon the Supreme Court of the United
States by supposing that they would violate the Constitution of
the United States. I tell him that such a thing is not possible.
It would be an act of moral treason that no man on the bench
could ever descend to. Mr. Lincoln himself would never in his
partisan feelings so far forget what was right as to be guilty of
such an act.

The fourth question of Mr. Lincoln is: "Are you in favor of
acquiring additional territory, in disregard as to how such ac-
quisition may affect .the Union on the slavery question ? }> This
question is very ingeniously and cunningly put.

The Black Republican creed lays it down expressly, that un-
der no circumstances shall we acquire any more territory unless
slavery is first prohibited in the country. I ask Mr. Lincoln
whether he is in favor of that proposition. Are you [addressing
Mr. Lincoln] opposed to the acquisition of any more territory,
under any circumstances, unless slavery is prohibited in it ? That
he does not like to answer. When I ask him whether he stands
up to that article in the platform of his party he turns, Yankee

STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS ,9,7

fashion, and, without answering it, asks me whether I am in
favor of acquiring territory without regard to how it may affect
the Union on the slavery question. I answer that whenever it
becomes necessary, in our growth and progress, to acquire more
territory, that I am in favor of it, without reference to the ques-
tion of slavery; and when we have acquired it, I will leave the
people free to do as they please, either to make it slave or free
territory, as they prefer. It is idle to tell me or you that we
have territory enough. Our fathers supposed that we had enough
when our territory extended to the Mississippi River, but a few
years' growth and expansion satisfied them that we needed more,
and the Louisiana Territory, from the west branch of the Missis-
sippi to the British possessions, was acquired. Then we acquired
Oregon, then California and New Mexico. We have enough now
for the present, but this is a young and a growing nation. It
swarms as often as a hive of bees; and as new swarms are turned
out each year, there must be hives in which they can gather and
make their honey. In less than fifteen years, if the same pro-
gress that has distinguished this country for the last fifteen years
continue, every foot of vacant land between this and the Pacific
Ocean owned by the United States will be occupied. Will you
not continue to increase at the end of fifteen years as well as
now ? I tell you, increase and multiply and expand is the law
of this nation's existence. You cannot limit this great Republic
by mere boundary lines, saying: (<Thus far shalt thou go, and no
further.8 Any one of you gentlemen might as well say to a son
twelve years old that he is big enough, and must not grow any
larger, and in order to prevent his growth put a hoop around
him to keep him to his present size. What would be the result ?
Either the hoop must burst and be rent asunder, or the child
must die. So it would be with this great nation. With our
natural increase, growing with a rapidity unknown in any other
part of the globe, with the tide of emigration that is fleeing
from despotism in the Old World to seek refuge in our own,
there is a constant torrent pouring into this country that requires
more land, more territory upon which to settle; and just as fast
as our interests and our destiny require additional territory in the
North, in the South, or on the islands of the ocean, I am for it,
and when we acquire it, will leave the people, according to the
Nebraska Bill, free to do as they please on the subject of slavery
and every other question.

1918

STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS

I trust now that Mr. Lincoln will deem himself answered on
his four points. He racked his brain so much in devising these
four questions that he exhausted himself, and had not strength
enough to invent the others. As soon as he is able to hold a
council with his advisers, Lovejoy, Farnsworth, and Fred Douglas,
he will frame and propound others. [w Good, good ! w] You Black
Republicans who say good, I have no doubt think that they are
all good men. I have reason to recollect that some people in this
country think that Fred Douglas is a very good man. The last
time I came here to make a speech, while talking from the stand
to you, people of Freeport, as I am doing to-day, I saw a car-
riage, and a magnificent one it was, drive up and take a position
on the outside of the crowd; a beautiful young lady was sitting
on the box-seat, whilst Fred Douglas and her mother reclined
inside, and the owner of the carriage acted as driver. I saw this
in your own town. [<( What of it ? w] All I have to say of it is
this, that if you, Black Republicans, think that the negro ought to
be on a social equality with your wives and daughters, and ride
in a carriage with your wife, whilst you drive the team, you have
a perfect right to do so. I am told that one of Fred Douglas's
kinsmen, another rich black negro, is now traveling in this part
of the State making speeches for his friend Lincoln as the
champion of black men. [(< What have you to say against it ? w]
All I have to say on that subject is, that those of you who be-
lieve that the negro is your equal and ought to be on an equal-
ity with you socially, politically, and legally, have a right to
entertain these opinions, and, of course, will vote for Mr. Lincoln.

« EXPANSION » AND CO-OPERATION WITH ENGLAND

(From the Debate in the Clayton Bulwer Treaty — United States Senate,

March i4th, 1853)

I HAVE a word or two to say in reply to the remarks of the
Senator from Delaware upon so much of my speech as re-
lated to the pledge in the Clayton and Bulwer Treaty, never
to annex any portion of that country. I objected to that clause
in the treaty, upon the ground that I was unwilling to enter
into a treaty stipulation with any European powers, in respect to
this continent, that we would not do, in the future, whatever our
duty, interest, honor, and safety might require in the course of

STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS

events. The Senator infers that I desire to annex Central Amer-
ica, because I was unwilling to give a pledge that we never
would do it. He reminded me that there was a clause in the
treaty with Mexico containing the stipulation that in certain con-
tingencies we would never annex any portion of Mexico. Sir, it
was unnecessary that he should remind me of that provision. He
has not forgotten how hard I struggled to get that clause out of
the treaty where it was retained in opposition to my vote. Had
the Senator given me his aid then to defeat that provision in the
Mexican Treaty, I would be better satisfied now with his excuse
for having inserted a still stronger pledge in his treaty. But
having advocated that pledge then, he should not attempt to
avoid the responsibility of his own act by citing that as a prece-
dent. I was unwilling to bind ourselves by treaty for all time
to come never to annex any more territory. I am content for
the present with the territory we have. I do not wish to annex
any portion of Mexico now. I did not wish to annex any part of
Central America then, nor do I at this time.

But I cannot close my eyes to the history of this country for
the last half century. Fifty years ago the question was being
debated in this Senate whether it was wise or not to acquire any
territory on the west bank of the Mississippi River, and it was
then contended that we could never, with safety, extend beyond
that river. It was at that time seriously considered whether the
Alleghany Mountains should not be the barrier beyond which we
should never pass. At a subsequent date, after we had acquired
Louisiana and Florida, more liberal views began to prevail, and
it was thought that perhaps we might venture to establish one
tier of States west of the Mississippi; but in order to prevent
the sad calamity of an undue expansion of our territory, the
policy was adopted of establishing an Indian Territory, with titles
in perpetuity, all along the western border of those States, so
that no more new States could possibly be created in that direc-
tion. That barrier could not arrest the onward progress of our
people. They burst through it, and passed the Rocky Mountains,
and were only arrested by the waters of the Pacific. Who, then,
is prepared to say that in the progress of events, having met
with the barrier of the ocean in our western course, we may not
be compelled to turn to the north and to the south for an out-
let ? How long is it since the gentleman from Delaware himself
thought that a time would never arrive when we would want

STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS

California ? I am aware that he was of that opinion at the time
we ratified the treaty, and annexed it.

Mr. Clayton — How ?

Mr. Douglas — By his voting for Mr. Crittenden's resolutions
declaring that we did not want any portion of Mexican territory.
You will find your vote in this volume which I hold in my hand.
I am aware that he belonged to that school of politicians who
thought we had territory enough. I have not forgotten that a
respectable portion of this body but a few years ago thought it
would be preposterous to bring a country so far distant as Cali-
fornia, and so little known, into the Union. But it has been
done, and now since California has become a member of the
Confederacy, with her immense commerce and inexhaustible re-
sources, we are told that the time will never come when the
territory lying halfway between our Atlantic and Pacific posses-
sions will be desirable. Central America is too far off, because
it is halfway to California, and on the main, direct route, on
the very route upon which you pay your Senators and Represen-
tatives in Congress their mileage in coming to the capital of the
nation. The usual route of travel, the public highway, the half-
way house from one portion of the country to the other, is so
far distant that the man who thinks the time will ever come
when we will want it is deemed a madman.

Mr. Clayton — Does the Senator apply those sentiments to
me ? I did not think so.

Mr. Douglas — I simply say that such an opinion was indi-
cated by the vote of the gentleman on the resolution of Mr. Crit-
tenden.

Mr. Clayton — The Senator is entirely mistaken on that point.

Mr. Douglas — In order to save time I waive the point as to
the Senator's vote, although it is recorded in the volume before
me, and he can read it at his leisure. But I am not mistaken
in saying that the Senator on yesterday did ridicule the idea that
we were ever to want any portion of Central America. He was
utterly amazed, and in his amazement inquired where were these
boundaries ever to cease. He wanted to know how far we were
going and if we were going to spread over the entire continent.
I do not think we will do it in our day, but I am not prepared
to prescribe limits to the area over which Democratic principles
may safely spread. I know not what our destiny may be. I try
to keep up with the spirit of the age, to keep in view the history

STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS

1921

of the country, see what we have done, whither we are going,
and with what velocity we are moving, in order to be prepared
for those events which it is not in the power of man to thwart.

You may make as many treaties as you please to fetter the
limits of this giant Republic, and she will burst them all from
her, and her course will be onward to a limit which I will not
venture to prescribe. Why the necessity of pledging your faith
that you will never annex any more of Mexico ? Do you not
know that you will be compelled to do it; that you cannot help
it; that your treaty will not prevent it, and that the only effect
it will have will be to enable European powers to accuse us of
bad faith when the act is done, and associate American faith and
Punic faith as synonymous terms? What is the use of your
guarantee that you will never erect any fortifications in Central
America; never annex, occupy, or colonize any portion of that
country ? How do you know that you can avoid doing it ? If
you make the canal, I ask you if American citizens will not set-
tle along its line; whether they will not build up towns at each
terminus; whether they will not spread over that country and
convert it into an American State; whether American principles
and American institutions will not be firmly planted there ? And
I ask you how many years you think will pass away before you
will find the same necessity to extend your laws over your own
kindred that you found in the case of Texas ? How long will it
be before that day arrives? It may not occur in the Senator's
day, nor mine. But so certain as this Republic exists, so certain
as we remain a united people, so certain as the laws of progress
which have raised us from a mere handful to a mighty nation
shall continue to govern our action, just so certain are these
events to be worked out, and you will be compelled to extend
your protection in that direction.

Sir, I am not desirous of hastening the day. I am not im-
patient of the time when it shall be realized. I do not wish to
give any additional impulse to our progress. We are going fast
enough. But I wish our public policy, our laws, our institutions,
should keep up with the advance in science, in the mechanic
arts, in agriculture, and in everything that tends to make us a
great and powerful nation. Let us look the future in the face,
and let us prepare to meet that which cannot be avoided.
Hence, I was unwilling to adopt that clause in the treaty guar-
anteeing that neither party would ever annex, colonize, or occupy

V — 131

STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS

any portion of Central America. I was opposed to it for another
reason. It was not reciprocal. Great Britain had possession of
the island of Jamaica. Jamaica was the nearest armed and for-
tified point to the terminus of the canal. Jamaica at present
commands the entrance of that canal; and all that Great Britain
desired was, inasmuch as she had possession of the only place
commanding the canal, to procure a stipulation that no other
power would ever erect a fortification nearer its terminus. That
stipulation is equivalent to an agreement that England may for-
tify, but that we never shall. Sir, when you look at the whole
history of that question, you will see that England, with her far-
seeing, sagacious policy, has attempted to circumscribe and re-
strict and restrain the free action of this Government. When
was it that Great Britain seized the possession of the terminus
of this canal ? Just six days after the signing of the treaty
which secured to us California! The moment that England saw
that, by the pending negotiations with Mexico, California was to
be acquired, she collected her fleets and made preparations for
the seizure of the port of San Juan, in order that she might be
gate-keeper on the public highway to our own possessions on the
Pacific. Within six days from the time we signed the treaty,
England seized by force and violence the very point now in con-
troversy. Is not this fact conclusive as to her motives ? Is it
not clear that her object was to obstruct our passage to our new
possessions ? Hence I do not sympathize with that feeling which
the Senator expressed yesterday, that it was a pity to have a
difference with a nation so friendly to us as England. Sir, I do
not see the evidence of her friendship. It is not in the nature
of things that she can be our friend. It is impossible she can
love us. I do not blame her for not loving us. Sir, we have
wounded her vanity and humbled her pride. She can never for-
give us. But for us, she would be the first power on the face
of the earth. But for us, she would have the prospect of main-
taining that proud position which she held for so long a period.
We are in her way. She is jealous of us, and jealously forbids
the idea of friendship. England does not love us; she cannot
love us, and we do not love her either. We have some things
in the past to remember that are not agreeable. She has more
in the present to humiliate her that she cannot forgive.

I do not wish to administer to the feeling of jealousy and
rivalry that exists between us and England. I wish to soften

STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS ,923

and smooth it down as much as possible; but why close our eyes
to the fact that friendship is impossible while jealousy exists ?
Hence England seizes every island in the sea and rock upon our
coast where she can plant a gun to intimidate us or to annoy
our commerce. Her policy has been to seize every military and
naval station the world over. Why does she pay such enormous
sums to keep her post at Gibraltar, except to keep it in ter-
rorem over the commerce of the Mediterranean ? Why her enor-
mous expense to maintain a garrison at the Cape of Good
Hope, except to command the great passage on the way to the
Indies ? Why is she at the expense to keep her position on that
little barren island Bermuda, and the miserable Bahamas, and
all the other islands along our coast, except as sentinels upon
our actions ? Does England hold Bermuda because of any profit
it is to her ? Has she any other motive for retaining it except
jealousy which stimulates hostility to us ? Is it not the case
with all of her possessions along our coast ? Why, then, talk
about the friendly bearing of England towards us when she is
extending that policy every day? New treaties of friendship,
seizure of islands, and erection of new colonies, in violation of
her treaties, seem to be the order of the day. In view of this
state of things, I am in favor of meeting England as we meet a
rival; meet her boldly, treat her justly and fairly, but make no
humiliating concession even for the sake of peace. She has as
much reason to make concessions to us as we have to make them
to her. I would not willingly disturb the peace of the world;
but, sir, the Bay Island Colony must be discontinued. It violates
the treaty.

Now, Mr. President, it is not my purpose to say another word
upon our foreign relations. I have only occupied so much time
as was necessary to put myself right in respect to the speech
made by the Senator from Delaware. He advocates one line of
policy in regard to our foreign relations, and I have deemed it
my duty to advocate another. It has been my object to put the
two systems by the side of each other, that the public might
judge between us.

1924

STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS

KANSAS AND « SQUATTER SOVEREIGNTY »
(From the Speech Delivered at Springfield, Illinois, June i2th, 1857)

Mr. President, Ladies, and Gentlemen: —

{APPEAR before you to-night, at the request of the grand jury
in attendance upon the United States Court, for the purpose

of submitting my views upon certain topics upon which they
have expressed a desire to hear my opinion. It was not my
purpose when I arrived among you to have engaged in any
public or political discussion; but when called upon by a body
of gentlemen so intelligent and respectable, coming from all
parts of the State, and connected with the administration of pub-
lic justice, I do not feel at liberty to withhold a full and frank
expression of my opinion upon the subjects to which they have
referred, and which now engrosses so large a share of the public
attention.

Of the Kansas question but little need be said at the present
time. You are familiar with the history of the question and my
connection with it. Subsequent reflection has strengthened and
confirmed my convictions in the soundness of the principles and
the correctness of the course I have felt it my duty to pursue
upon that subject. Kansas is about to speak for herself through
her delegates assembled in convention to form a constitution,
preparatory to her admission into the Union on an equal foot-
ing with the original States. Peace and prosperity now prevail
throughout her borders. The law under which her delegates
are about to be elected is believed to be just and fair in all its
objects and provisions. There is every reason to hope and be-
lieve that the law will be fairly interpreted and impartially exe-
cuted, so as to insure to every bona fide inhabitant the free and
quiet exercise of the elective franchise. If any portion of the
inhabitants, acting under the advice of political leaders in distant
States, shall choose to absent themselves from the polls, and
withhold their votes, with a view of leaving the Free-State
Democrats in a minority, and thus securing a Pro-Slavery Con-
stitution, in opposition to the wishes of a majority of the people
living under it, let the responsibility rest on those who, for
partisan purposes, will sacrifice the principles they profess to
cherish and promote. Upon them, and upon the political party
for whose benefit and under the direction of whose leaders they

STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS

act, let the blame be visited of fastening upon the people of a
new State institutions repugnant to their feelings and in viola-
tion of their wishes. The organic act secures to the people of
Kansas the sole and exclusive right of forming and regulating
their domestic institutions to suit themselves, subject to no other
limitation than that which the Constitution of the United States
imposes. The Democratic party is determined to see the great
fundamental principles of the organic act carried out in good
faith. The present election law in Kansas is acknowledged to
be fair and just, the rights of the voters are clearly defined,
and the exercise of those rights will be efficiently and scrupu-
lously protected. Hence, if the majority of the people of Kansas
desire to have it a free State (and we are told by the Republi-
can party that nine -tenths of the people of that Territory are
free State men), there is no obstacle in the way of bringing
Kansas into the Union as a free State, by the votes and voice
of her own people, and in conformity with the principles of the
Kansas- Nebraska Act, provided all the free State men will go
to the polls and vote their principles in accordance with their
professions. If such is not the result, let the consequences be
visited upon the heads of those whose policy it is to produce
strife, anarchy, and bloodshed in Kansas, that their party may
profit by slavery agitation in the Northern States of this Union.
That the Democrats in Kansas will perform their duty fearlessly
and nobly, according to the principle they cherish, I have no
doubt; and that the result of the struggle will be such as will
gladden the heart and strengthen the hopes of every friend of
the Union, I have entire confidence.

The Kansas question being settled peacefully and satisfac-
torily, in accordance with the wishes of her own people, slavery
agitation should be banished from the halls of Congress, and
cease to be an exciting element in our political struggles. Give
fair play to that principle of self-government which recognizes
the right of the people of each State and Territory to form and
regulate their own domestic institutions, and sectional strife will
be forced to give place to that fraternal feeling which animated
the fathers of the Revolution and made every citizen of every
State of this glorious confederacy a member of a common broth-
erhood.

1926

STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS

THE JOHN BROWN RAID

(From a Speech Delivered in the Senate, January i6th, 1860, Supporting a
Bill « to Protect the States against Invasion »)

{PRESUME there will be very little difference of opinion that it
will be necessary to place the whole military power of the
Government at the disposal of the President, under proper
guards and restrictions against abuse, to repel and suppress in-
vasion when the hostile force shall be actually in the field.
But, sir, that is not sufficient. Such legislation would not be
a full compliance with this guaranty of the Constitution. The
framers of that instrument meant more when they gave the guar-
anty. Mark the difference in language between the provision for
protecting the United States against invasion and that for pro-
tecting the States. When it provided for protecting the United
States, it said Congress shall have power to <( repel invasion."
When it came to make this guaranty to the States, it changed
the language and said the United States shall <( protect w each
of the States against invasion. In the one instance the duty of
the Government is to repel; in the other, the guaranty is that
they will protect. In other words, the United States are not
permitted to wait until the enemy shall be upon your borders;
until, the invading army shall have been organized and drilled
and placed in march with a view to the invasion; but they must
pass all laws necessary and proper to insure protection and do-
mestic tranquillity to each State and Territory of this Union
against invasion or hostilities from other States and Territories.

Then, sir, I hold that it is not only necessary to use the mil-
itary power when the actual case of invasion shall occur, but to
authorize the judicial department of the Government to suppress
all conspiracies and combinations in the several States with in-
tent to invade a State, or molest or disturb its government, its
p^ace, its citizens, its property, or its institutions. You must
punish the conspiracy, the combination with intent to do the act,
and then you will suppress it in advance. There is no principle
more familiar to the legal profession than that wherever it is
proper to declare an act to be a crime it is proper to punish a
conspiracy or combination with intent to perpetrate the act.
Look upon your statute books, and I presume you will find an
enactment to punish the counterfeiting of the coin of the United

STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS

1927

States; and then another section to punish a man for having
counterfeit coin in his possession with intent to pass it; and an-
other section to punish him for having the molds or dies or
instruments for counterfeiting, with intent to use them. This is
a familiar principle in legislative and judicial proceedings. If
the act of invasion is criminal, the conspiracy to invade should
also be made criminal. If it is unlawful and illegal to invade a
State and run off fugitive slaves, why not make it unlawful to
form conspiracies and combinations in the several States with
intent to do the act ? We have been told that a notorious man,
who has recently suffered death for his crimes upon the gallows,
boasted in Cleveland, Ohio, in a public lecture, a year ago, that
he had then a body of men employed in running away horses
from the slaveholders of Missouri, and pointed to a livery stable
in Cleveland which was full of the stolen horses at that time.

I think it is within our competency, and consequently our
duty, to pass a law making every conspiracy or combination in
any State or Territory of this Union to invade another with in-
tent to steal or run away property of any kind, whether it be
negroes or horses or property of any other description, into an-
other State, a crime, and punish the conspirators by indictment
in the United States courts and confinement in the prisons and
penitentiaries of the State or Territory where the conspiracy may
be formed and quelled. Sir, I would carry these provisions of
law as far as our constitutional powers will reach. I would
make it a crime to form conspiracies with a view of invading
States or Territories to control elections, whether they be under
the garb of Emigrant Aid Societies of New England or Blue
Lodges of Missouri. In other words, this provision of the Con-
stitution means more than the mere repelling of an invasion
when the invading army shall reach the border of a State. The
language is, it shall protect the State against invasion; the mean-
ing of which is, to use the language of the preamble to the Con-
stitution, to insure to each State domestic tranquillity against
external violence. There can be no peace, there can be no pros-
perity, there can be no safety in any community unless it is
secured against violence from abroad. Why, sir, it has been a
question seriously mooted in Europe, whether it was not the
duty of England, a power foreign to France, to pass laws to
punish conspiracies in England against the lives of the princes
of France. I shall not argue the question of comity between

1928

STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS

foreign States. I predicate my argument upon the Constitution
by which we are governed and which we have sworn to obey,
and demand that the Constitution be executed in good faith so
as to punish and suppress every combination, every conspiracy,
either to invade a State or to molest its inhabitants, or to dis-
turb its property, or to subvert its institutions and its govern-
ment. I believe this can be effectually done by authorizing the
United States courts in the several States to take jurisdiction of
the offense, and punish the violation of the law with appropriate
punishments.

It cannot be said that the time has not yet arrived for such
legislation. It cannot be said with truth that the Harper's Ferry
case will not be repeated, or is not in danger of repetition.
It is only necessary to inquire into the causes which produced
the Harper's Ferry outrage, and ascertain whether those causes
are yet in active operation, and then you can determine
whether there is any ground for apprehension that that invasion
will be repeated. Sir, what were the causes which produced the
Harper's Ferry outrage ? Without stopping to adduce evidence
in detail, I have no hesitation in expressing my firm and delib-
erate conviction that the Harper's Ferry crime was the natural,
logical, inevitable result of the doctrines and teachings of the
Republican party, as explained and enforced in their platform,
their partisan presses, their pamphlets and books, and especially
in the speeches of their leaders in and out of Congress. . . .

And, sir, inasmuch as the Constitution of the United States
confers upon Congress the power coupled with the duty of pro-
tecting each State against external aggression, and inasmuch as
that includes the power of suppressing and punishing conspira-
cies in one State against the institutions, property, people, or
government of every other State, I desire to carry out that
power vigorously. Sir, give us such a law as the Constitution
contemplates and authorizes, and I will show the Senator from
New York that there is a constitutional mode of repressing the
"irrepressible conflict." I will open the prison doors to allow
conspirators against the peace of the Republic and the domestic
tranquillity of our States to select their cells wherein to drag
out a miserable life as a punishment for their crimes against the
peace of society.

STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS

THE ISSUES OF 1861
(From an Address to the Illinois Legislature, April 25th, 1861)

WHENEVER our government is assailed, when hostile armies
are marching under rude and odious banners against the
government of our country, the shortest way to peace is
the most stupendous and unanimous preparation for war. The
greater the unanimity the less blood will be shed. The more
prompt and energetic is the movement, and the more important
it is in numbers, the shorter will be the struggle.

While all the States of this Union, and every citizen of every
State, has a priceless legacy dependent upon the success of our
efforts to maintain this Government, we in the great valley of
the Mississippi have peculiar interests and inducements to the
struggle. What is the attempt now being made ? Seven States
of this Union choose to declare that they will no longer obey
the behest of the United States, that they will withdraw from
the government established by our fathers, that they will dis-
solve, without our consent, the bonds that have united us to-
gether. But, not content with that, they proceed to invade and
obstruct our dearest and most inalienable rights, secured to us
by the Constitution. One of their first acts is to establish a
battery of cannon upon the banks of the Mississippi, on the
dividing line between the States of Mississippi and Tennessee,
and require every steamer that passes down the river to come
to under a gun, to receive a customhouse officer on board to
prescribe where the boat may land, and upon what terms it may
put out a barrel of flour or a cask of bacon, to cut off our free-
dom of trade upon the river and on the borders of those States.
We are called on to sanction this policy. Before consenting
to their right to commit such acts, I implore you to consider
that the same principle which will allow the cotton States to
exclude us from the ports of the Gulf would authorize the New
England States and New York and Pennsylvania to exclude us
from the Atlantic, and the Pacific States to exclude us from the
ports of that ocean. Whenever you sanction this doctrine of
secession, you authorize the States bordering on the Atlantic
and Pacific Oceans to withdraw from us, form alliances among
themselves, and exclude us from the markets of the world and
from communication with all the rest of Christendom. Not only

I930 STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS

this, but there follows a tariff of duties on imports, the levying
of taxes on every pound of tea and coffee and sugar and every
yard of cloth that we may import for our consumption; the levy-
ing, too, of an export duty upon every pound of meat and every
bushel of corn that we may choose to send to the markets of
the world to pay for our imports. Bear in mind that these very
cotton States, who in former times have been so boisterous in
their demands for free trade, have, among their first acts, estab-
lished an export duty on cotton for the first time in American
history.

It is an historical fact, well known to every man who has
read the debates of the convention which framed the Constitu-
tion of the United States, that the Southern States refused to
become parties to the Constitution unless there was an express
provision in the Constitution forbidding Congress to levy an
export duty on any product of the earth. No sooner have these
cotton States seceded than an export duty is levied; and, if they
will levy it on their cotton, do you not think that they will levy
it on our pork, and our beef, and our corn, and our wheat, and
our manufactured articles, and on all we have to sell ? Then
what is the proposition ? It is to enable the tier of States bor-
dering on the Atlantic and Pacific, and on the Gulf, surrounding
us on all sides, to withdraw from our Union, form alliances
among themselves, and then levy taxes on us without our con-
sent, and collect revenue without giving us any just proportion
of all the amount collected. Can we submit to taxation without
representation ? Can we permit nations foreign to us to collect
revenues out of our produce, out of the fruit of our industry ?
I ask the citizens of Illinois, I ask every citizen in the great
basin between the Rocky Mountains and the Alleghanies, in the
valleys of the Ohio, the Mississippi, and the Missouri, to tell me
whether he is willing to sanction a line of policy that may iso-
late us' from the markets of the world, and make us provinces
dependent on the powers that thus choose to isolate us ?

I warn you, my countrymen, that, whenever you permit this
to be done in the Southern States, New York will very soon
follow their example. New York, that great port, where two-
thirds of our revenue are collected, and whence two-thirds of our
goods are exported, will not long be able to resist the temptation
of taxing fifteen millions of people in the great West, when she
can thus monopolize their resources, and release her own people

STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS

from any taxation whatever. ... I am not prepared to take
up arms, or to sanction a policy of our government to take up
arms, to make any war on the rights of the Southern States, on
their institutions, on their rights of person or property, but, on
the contrary, would rush to their defense and protect them from
assault; but, while that is the case, I will never cease to urge
my countrymen to take arms to fight to the death in defense of
our indefeasible rights. Hence, if a war does come, it is a war
of self-defense on our part. It is a war in defense of our own
just rights; in defense of the government which we have in-
herited as a priceless legacy from our patriotic fathers; in de-
fense of our great rights of freedom of trade, commerce, transit,
and intercourse from the centre to the circumference of this
great continent. . . .

My friends, I can say no more. To discuss these topics is
the most painful duty of my life. It is with a sad heart, with
a grief that I have never before experienced, that I have to
contemplate this fearful struggle; but I believe in my conscience
that it is a duty we owe to ourselves, our children, and our
God, to protect this Government and that flag from every assail-
ant, be he who he may.

1932

LORENZO DOW, JUNIOR

(1777-1834)

JEW subjects are of greater scientific interest than that of the
extent to which the human mind, when not habitually gov-
erned in its operations by the will, is liable to be influenced
by such musical suggestion as influences the ear of a composer in
making an instrumental melody, or of a versifier in rhyming. It is
certain that this unconscious suggestion is a factor in the pleasing
expression of thought and that in disordered intellects it is liable to
operate independently of the will. In its extreme manifestations it
is recognized as a mark of insanity and is treated as a disease by
alienists. In its healthy development, however, it has a great deal
to do with the modes of thought and expression of those who are
called <( natural orators. » To this class Lorenzo Dow belongs. Had
he been carefully educated, so that his sense of humor and his ear
for melody would not have co-operated in impelling him continually
to precipitate himself from the sublime into the ridiculous, he might
have been one of the greatest orators of America. As it is, he is
remarkable among speakers in English because of the misfortune of
humor and the complete fluency which illustrates the results of un-
restrained ability to give melodious expression to everything that is
liable to come into the mind of a speaker in sympathy with the
average intellect of his times. He was born at Coventry, Connecti-
cut, October i6th, 1777. Inspired by the example of Wesley, but with-
out Wesley's education, he became an evangelist, unconventional in
his ideas and eccentric in his methods. After making himself cele-
brated in America, he went as a missionary to England and Ireland,
attracting much attention there. He died in Washington, February
2d, 1834. His journals and miscellaneous writings have been pub-
lished, and are still in print.

LORENZO DOW, JUNIOR

IMPROVEMENT IN AMERICA
My Dear Friends: —

I MEAN to speak of the spirit of improvement in general terms,
as relating to enlightenment, the advancement of knowledge

and progress in the arts and sciences. In this respect it is
like the rolling avalanche, that leaves detached portions of its
bulk by the way, and yet keeps augmenting in its circumvolu-
tionary course. Hardy Enterprise first goes forward as a pioneer
in the untracked wilderness, and commences fight with the
mighty trees of the forest, cutting them off, some in the prime
of life, and others in a green old age, and compelling them to
spill their sap upon their country's soil. Then walks Agriculture
into them 'ere diggins, with spade, harrow, and hoe, and scatters
the seed of promise hither and thither, assuring the hopeful
settler that his children's children shall sop their hard-earned
crumbs in the real gravy of the land. The handmaid Art then
comes forward, erects edifices of splendor, and leaves her orna-
ments of skill on every side — builds studios for the scholars of
science, and throws facilities in their way for increasing their
wisdom, or for making egregious fools of themselves.

Such, my hearers, is the spirit of improvement. Like the
overflowing of a stream that covers and enriches the valley, it
betters the natural and social condition of man, opens wide the
avenues to the temple of reason, and expands the young buds of
prosperity. Brush away the fog of a couple of centuries, and
take a look at this, our native land, as it then appeared. Here,
upon the Atlantic shore, the scream of the panther arose on the
midnight air with the savage war whoop, and the pale-faced
pilgrim trembled for the safety of his defenseless home. He
planted his beans in fear, and gathered them in trouble; his
chickens and his children were plundered by the foe, and life
itself was in danger of leaking out from between the logs of his
hut, even if it was fortified with three muskets, a spunky wife,
and a jug of whisky. Yes, my friends, this was then a wild,
gloomy, and desolate place. Where the Indian squaw hung her
young papoose upon the bough, and left it to squall at the hush-
a-bye of the blast, the Anglo-Saxon mother now rocks the cradle
of her delicate babe on the carpet of peace, and in the gay
parlor of fashion. The wild has been changed to a blooming

LORENZO DOW, JUNIOR

garden, and its limits are expanding with the mighty genius of
Liberty. On Erie's banks the flocks are now straying o'er thymy
pastures, and a few Dutchmen (but no shepherds) are already
piping there. The yells of fierce savages now faintly echo from
beyond the waters of the Mississippi, and the time is not far off
when the last Indian will leave his bones to bleach on the rock-
bound coast of the Pacific.

HOPE AND DESPAIR

THE whitest foam dances upon the darkest billow, and the
stars shine the brightest when surrounded by the blackest
of thunder clouds, even as a diamond pin glistens with the
greatest effulgence when fastened upon the ebony bosom of an
Ethiopian wench. So hope mirrors its most brilliant rays in the
dark wave of despair, and happiness is never so complete as
when visited occasionally by the ministers of misery. These ups
and downs in the pathway of man's existence are all for the
best, and yet he allows them to vex and torment his peace till
he bursts the boiler of his rage, and scalds his own toes. I have
no doubt but the common run of people would like to have a
railroad built from here to the grave, and go through by steam,
but if they all worked as easy in life's galling collar as I do,
they would have things just as they are, — some ups and some
downs, some sweet and some bitter, some sunshine and some
storm, — because they constitute a variety. I wouldn't give a
shinplaster penny to have the road of existence perfectly level;
for I should soon become tired of a dull sameness of prospect,
and make myself miserable in the idea that I must experience
no material change, either for better or for worse. Plum pud-
ding is most excellent stuff to wind off a dinner with; but all
plum pudding would be worse than none at all. So you see, my
friends, the troubles and trials of life are absolutely necessary to
enable us to judge rightly of genuine happiness, whenever it
happens to enliven the saturnine region of the heart with its
presence.

If we never were to have our jackets and shirts wet with the
cold rain of misfortune, we could never know how good it feels
to stand out and dry in the warm rays of comfort. You need
not hesitate ever to travel through swamps of trouble for fear of

\

LORENZO DOW, JUNIOR

sinking over head in the mud of despondency, for despair is
never quite despair. No, my friends, it never comes quite up to
the mark in the most desperate cases. I know the prospects of
man are sometimes most tormentingly conglomerous ; but the
clouds eventually clear away, and his sky again becomes clear
and quiescent as a basin of potato starch. His sun of ambition
may be darkened, his moon of memory turned to blood, and the
star of his peace blotted from the firmament of his — I don't
know what; but he is not entirely a gone goose even in this
situation. Those semi- celestial angels of light and loveliness,
Hope and Fancy, will twine the sweetest of roses round his care-
wrinkled brow; and while one whispers in his ear, "Don't give
up the ship,** the other dresses up for him a bower of future
happiness, and festoons it with the choicest of Elysian flowers.
The very darkest cell of despair always has a gimlet hole to let
the glory of hope shine in, and dry up the tears of the poor pris-
oner of woe.

1936

CHARLES D. DRAKE

(1811-1892)

HARLES D. DRAKE plays an important part in the history of
the Reconstruction period as a representative of what was
contemporaneously called its extreme <( radicalism. * He rep-
resented an element which intended to play and did play the role
of "Root and Branch Men," demanding the complete eradication of
the political power of the former slave-holders. As the putative
father of the * Drake Constitution" in Missouri, he became cele-
brated, and is likely to keep a place in history in connection with that
instrument — scarcely if at all less important in its connection than
the Missouri Compromise was to the issue of the territorial exten-
sion of slavery. He was born in Cincinnati in 1811. In 1827 he
served in the navy as a midshipman, but left the service, studied law,
was admitted to the bar in Cincinnati, and in 1834 removed to St.
Louis. He served in the Missouri Legislature of 1859-60; was Vice-
President of the Constitutional Convention which adopted the * Drake
Constitution" of 1865; was United States Senator for Missouri from
1867 till 1870; and was Presiding Justice of the Court of Claims from
1870 to 1885.

AGAINST « COPPERHEADS »
(From a Speech Delivered in Chicago, September ist, 1864)

MUCH has been said in the last three years about the cause of
this war. I have my own views of what caused it, which
I will give presently; but let us now see what the Cop-
perheads have said in Chicago on that subject. A Mr. Ben
Allen, from somewhere on the face of the globe, — I don't know
where, — tells us what was not the cause — tells us that * slavery
was not the cause of the war ! " and so all the rest would have
said, had they spoken on that point. I never saw a rebel, a
Copperhead, or a Democrat, who would admit that slavery had
anything to do with the war. Oh, no, "the peculiar institution"
is as innocent of that as a lamb of stirring up strife with a wolf!

CHARLES D. DRAKE ,,, ,?

Then he goes on to say that "the Abolitionists were the cause
of the war w ; and every rebel, traitor, Copperhead, and Democrat
in the North would say Amen! if he were called to respond to
that sentiment. He then says that aif you would remove the
cause of the war, you must remove the Abolitionists*; and to
that sublime proposition every rebel, traitor, Copperhead, and
Democrat in the land would cry, Glory, Hallelujah! But if they
undertook to remove all the Abolitionists which this infernal war
has made, who were never Abolitionists before, they would have
a jolly time of it. That is Mr. Ben Allen's explanation of the
cause of the war, and that is the Democratic explanation of it.

Then comes Vallandigham with his explanation and says:
tt We resorted to arms to compel a people to submission when
they simply wanted a redress of grievances." My friends, of all
the falsehoods which traitors, North or South, have uttered in
defense of the Rebellion, there is not one more black than that.
If there is anything certain, it is that the old " Father of Lies *
has made Chicago his particular abode since Friday last. He no
doubt thought that a Democratic convention was the very place
where he would be at home; and now that his body is gone, I
trust, for your sake, he has gone too.

But look at these explanations of the cause of the war in one
point of view. They are exponents of Democratic opinion and
sentiment, and I ask you to note that they impute the whole
blame of the war to the North and utter not one word of blame
to the South. Who can doubt that the men who can so express
themselves know better? Do they not willfully lie, by the sup-
pression of the truth, as well as by the expression of falsehood ?
They know, as well as they know they live, that the war was
begun by the South with but one object, and that was to estab-
lish a great empire of slavery upon the shores of the Gulf of
Mexico. That is my explanation of the cause of the war, and
before God it is the only true one. I would be glad to give you
the evidence of it, as I have on former occasions given it to the
people of Missouri, but I fear I have already detained you too
long. Well, my friends, if you are willing to listen, I will pre-
sent to you such expressions from Southern leaders, in 1860 and
1 86 1, as will not fail, I think, to demonstrate the irrefragable
truth of my views on this subject. I do it the more willingly,
because I think that such matter should everywhere be brought
out and always kept before the people,
v — 122

1938

CHARLES D. DRAKE

Senator Iverson, of Georgia, said: —

"There is but one path of safety for the South, but one mode of
preserving her institution of domestic slavery, and that is, a confed-
eracy of States having no incongruous and opposing elements — a
confederacy of slave States alone, with homogeneous language, laws,
interests, and institutions. Under such a Confederate Republic, with
a constitution that should shut out the approach and entrance of all
incongruous and conflicting elements, which should protect the insti-
tution from change, and keep the whole nation bound to its preser-
vation by an unchangeable fundamental law, the fifteen slave States,
with their power of expansion, would present to the world the most
free, prosperous, and happy nation on the face of the earth. »

Mr. Brooks, Representative from South Carolina, said: —

" We have the issue upon us now ; and how are we to meet it ? I
tell you from the bottom of my heart, that the only mode which
I can think available for meeting it is just to tear the Constitution
of the United States and to trample it underfoot, and form a South-
ern Confederacy, every State of which shall be a slaveholding State. }>

The South Carolina convention thus addressed the people of
the slave States: —

<( People of the slaveholding States of . the United States : Circum-
stances beyond our control have placed us in the van of the great
controversy between the Northern and Southern States. We would
have preferred that other States should have assumed the position
we now occupy. Independent ourselves, we disclaim any intention
or design to lead the counsels of the other Southern States. Provi-
dence has cast our lot together by extending over us an identity of
purpose, interests, and institutions. South Carolina desires no destiny
separate from yours. To be one of a great slaveholding confederacy,
stretching its arms over a territory larger than any power in Europe
possesses — with a population four times greater than that of the
whole United States when they achieved their independence of the
British Empire — with productions which make our existence more
important to the world than that of any other people who inhabit
it — with common institutions to defend and common danger to en-
counter, we ask your sympathy and your confederation.

<( United together, and we must be the most independent, as we
are the most important among the nations of the world. United to-
gether, and we require no other instrument to conquer peace than
our beneficent productions. United together, and we must be a
great, free, and prosperous people, whose renown must be spread

CHARLES D. DRAKE

»939

throughout the civilized world, and pass down, we trust, to the re-
motest ages. We ask you to join us in forming a Confederacy of
Slaveholding States.**

Senator Brown, of Mississippi, said: —

"I want Cuba; I want Tamaulipas, Potosi, and one or two other
Mexican States; and I want them all for the same reason — for the
planting and spreading of slavery. And a footing in Central America
will wonderfully aid us in acquiring those other States. Yes, I want
those countries for the spread of slavery. I would spread the bless-
ings of slavery, like the religion of our Divine Master, to the utter-
most ends of the earth. . . . Whether we can obtain the territory
while the Union lasts, I do not know; I fear we cannot, but I would
make an honest effort, and if we failed I would go out of the Union
and try it there. w

Ex-Governor Call, of Florida, said: —

(< Slavery cannot be stopped in its career of usefulness to the
whole world. It cannot be confined to its present limits. Dire and
uncontrollable necessity will compel the master and the slave to cut
their way through every barrier which may be thrown around it, or
perish together in the attempt. ... It may be in the providence
of God that the American Union, which has cheered the whole world
with its promises, like the star which stood for a time over the
cradle of Bethlehem, may fall and lose its light forever. It may be,
in his dispensation of human events, that the great American family
shall be divided into many nations. But divided or united, the path
of destiny must lead the Anglo-Saxon race to the mastery of this
whole continent. And if the whole column shall not advance, this
division of the race will, with the institution of African slavery, ad-
vance from the banks of the Rio Grande to the line under the sun,
establishing the waymarks of progress, the altars of the reformed re-
ligion, the temples of a higher civilization, a purer liberty, and a bet-
ter system of human government.*

There, my friends, you have the open avowal of that empire
of slavery which the South was to build upon the ruins of the
Union, the broken ramparts of the Constitution, and the grave of
Liberty. For such a cause as that the war was begun, for such
a cause it is prosecuted, and to such an end it will go, if the
Democracy can carry it there, even if the country go into the
very jaws of hell. It is for the loyal men of the North, and
for them alone, to say whether that cause shall triumph.

1940

HENRY DRUMMOND

(1851-1897)

'ROFESSOR HENRY DRUMMOND'S address, * The Greatest Thing in
the World,* has probably been circulated more extensively
than any other address of the nineteenth century, and its
place as one of the great classics of the language is already assured.
This is partly due to the masterly simplicity of its style, but there
is a deeper reason. After a quarter of a century of wrangling be-
tween the "dons** of science and the doctors of theology, Drummond
came to w speak with authority and not as the scribes.8 From the
publication of Darwin's < Origin of Species,* until Drummond, as
thorough-going an evolutionist as Darwin himself, published his < Nat-
ural Law in the Spiritual World,* not a few supposed that a great
conflict was in progress between Religion and Science. Under the in-
fluence of Drummond's work, this idea lost its popularity, and when,
some time after its delivery, his address, ( The Greatest Thing in the
World,* was published, it had an unprecedented circulation, — a cir-
culation which resulted in quieting the fears of the religious world,
until then greatly apprehensive of what was called <( Darwinism. M

Drummond was born at Stirling, Scotland, in 1851. As professor
of biology in the Free Church College of Glasgow, he was brought
into close touch with such great evolutionists as Spencer and Huxley;
and as fully as they, he accepted the conclusion that all the forces
of nature work continually to develop the higher forms of life from
the lower. This central thought of evolution seemed to him to be in
the fullest harmony with the central thought of Christianity, and he
found in it an inspiration which gave him an almost prophetic earn-
estness in pleading with his generation to hold to its old ideals and
realize them through what he looked on as the new manifestations
of their power in controlling the human mind and bringing it into
closer touch with the order and harmony of nature.

An ordained minister in the Free Church of Scotland, Professor
Drummond diversified his work as a scientist by not less zealous
work as an evangelist. He was a friend and pupil of Moody, but
his greatest work has been in influencing the intellect of those who
had become skeptical because changes in language and habits of ex-
pression had made unintelligible or even repulsive to them what
their ancestors had regarded with veneration as the deepest truths

1940

HENRY DRUMMOND

(1851-1897)

[ROFESSOR HENRY DRUMMOND'S address, < The Greatest Thing in
the World,* has probably been circulated more extensively
than any other address of the nineteenth century, and its
place as one of the great classics of the language is already assured.
This is partly due to the masterly simplicity of its style, but there
is a deeper reason. After a quarter of a century of wrangling be-
tween the "dons® of science and the doctors of theology, Drummond
came to "speak with authority and not as the scribes.** From the
publication of Darwin's ( Origin of Species,* until Drummond, as
thorough-going an evolutionist as Darwin himself, published his < Nat-
ural Law in the Spiritual World,* not a few supposed that a great
conflict was in progress between Religion and Science. Under the in-
fluence of Drummond's work, this idea lost its popularity, and when,
some time after its delivery, his address, ( The Greatest Thing in the
World,* was published, it had an unprecedented circulation, — a cir-
culation which resulted in quieting the fears of the religious world,
until then greatly apprehensive of what was called "Darwinism.**

Drummond was born at Stirling, Scotland, in 1851. As professor
of biology in the Free Church College of Glasgow, he was brought
into close touch with such great evolutionists as Spencer and Huxley;
and as fully as they, he accepted the conclusion that all the forces
of nature work continually to develop the higher forms of life from
the lower. This central thought of evolution seemed to him to be in
the fullest harmony with the central thought of Christianity, and he
found in it an inspiration which gave him an almost prophetic earn-
estness in pleading with his generation to hold to its old ideals and
realize them through what he looked on as the new manifestations
of their power in controlling the human mind and bringing it into
closer touch with the order and harmony of nature.

An ordained minister in the Free Church of Scotland, Professor
Drummond diversified his work as a scientist by not less zealous
work as an evangelist. He was a friend and pupil of Moody, but
his greatest work has been in influencing the intellect of those who
had become skeptical because changes in language and habits of ex-
pression had made unintelligible or even repulsive to them what
their ancestors had regarded with veneration as the deepest truths

«ECCE HOMO!*

' Photogravure after the P am ting by Antonio Cisert.

;ERHAPS no other painter has put more into his treatment of this sub-
ject than Ciseri does in this painting. As Pilate leans forward to
speak to the crowd in the street below, it is intended that we

shall feel that the climax of Roman law and Hebrew ritual has come — that

modern times have begun.

HENRY DRUMMOND ,94,

the human mind is capable of conceiving. It was in translating into
modern forms these antique expressions of principle that Drummond
most excelled. The ability to do this and at the same time to trans-
late "scientific ideas into common English" was, without doubt, the
chief source of his power. His address, <The Greatest Thing in the
World^ is by some considered the masterpiece of its class.

THE GREATEST THING IN THE WORLD

EVERY one has asked himself the great question of antiquity as
of the modern world: What is the summum bonum — the
supreme good ? You have life before you. Once only you
can live it. What is the noblest object of desire, the supreme
gift to covet ?

We have been accustomed to be told that the greatest thing
in the religious world is Faith. That great word has been the
keynote for centuries of the popular religion, and we have easily
learned to look upon it as the greatest thing in the world. Well,
we are wrong. If we have been told that, we may miss the
mark. I have taken you, in the chapter which I have just read,
to Christianity at its source, and there we have seen * The great-
est of these is love." It is not an oversight. Paul was speaking
of faith just a moment before. He says: "If I have all faith, so
that I can remove mountains, and have not love, I am nothing."
So far from forgetting, he deliberately contrasts them, "Now
abideth Faith, Hope, Love," and without a moment's hesitation
the decision falls: "The greatest of these is Love."

And it is not prejudice. A man is apt to recommend to
others his own strong point.

Love was not Paul's strong point. The observing student can
detect a beautiful tenderness growing and ripening all through
his character as Paul gets old; but the hand that wrote: "The
greatest of these is Love," when we meet it first, is stained with
blood.

Nor is this letter to the Corinthians peculiar in singling out
love as the summum bonum. The masterpieces of Christianity
are agreed about it. Peter says, "Above all things have fervent
love among yourselves." Above all things. And John goes fur-
ther, "God is love." And you remember the profound remark
which Paul makes elsewhere, " Love is the fulfilling of the law. *

I942 HENRY DRUMMOND

Did you ever think what he meant by that ? In those days men
were working their passage to Heaven by keeping the Ten Com-
mandments and the hundred and ten other commandments which
they had manufactured out of them. Christ said, I will show
you a more simple way. If you do one thing, you will do these
one hundred and ten things without ever thinking about them.
If you love, you will unconsciously fulfill the whole law. And
you can readily see for yourselves how that must be so. Take
any of the commandments : <( Thou shalt have no other gods be-
fore me.* If a man love God, you will not require to tell him
that. Love is the fulfilling of that law. <( Take not his name in
vain." Would he ever dream of taking his name in vain, if he
loved him ? <( Remember the Sabbath Day to keep it holy. w
Would he not be too glad to have one day in seven to dedicate
more exclusively to the object of his affection ? Love would ful-
fill all these laws regarding God. And so, if he loved man,
you would never think of telling him to honor his father and
mother. He could not do anything else. It would be prepos-
terous to tell him not to kill. You could only insult him if you
suggested that he should not steal — how could he steal from
those he loved ? It would be superfluous to beg him not to bear
false witness against his neighbor. If he loved him, it would be
the last thing he would do.

And you would never dream of urging him not to covet what
his neighbors had. He would rather they possessed it than him-
self. In this way, <( Love is the fulfilling of the law. * It is the
rule for fulfilling all rules, the new commandment for keeping
all the old commandments, Christ's one secret of the Christian
life.

Now Paul had learned that; and in this noble eulogy he has
given us the most wonderful and original account extant of the
summum bonum. We may divide it into three parts: In the be-
ginning of the short chapter we have Love contrasted; in the heart
of it we have Love analyzed; toward the end we have Love de-
fended as the supreme gift.

Paul begins by contrasting Love with other things that men
in those days thought much of. I shall not attempt to go over
those things in detail. Their inferiority is already obvious.

He contrasts it with eloquence. And what a noble gift it is,
the power of playing upon the souls and wills of men, and rous-
ing them to lofty purposes and holy deeds. Paul says : w If I

HENRY DRUMMOND

'943

speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not
love, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal."
And we all know why. We have all felt the brazenness of
words without emotion, the hollowness, the unaccountable unper-
suasiveness, of eloquence behind which lies no Love.

He contrasts it with prophecy. He contrasts it with myster-
ies. He contrasts it with faith. He contrasts it with charity.
Why is Love greater than faith ? Because the end is greater
than the means. And why is it greater than charity ? Because
the whole is greater than the part. Love is greater than faith,
because the end is greater than the means. What is the use of
having faith ? It is to connect the soul with God. And what is
the object of connecting man with God ? That he may become
like God. But God is Love. Hence Faith, the means, is in
order to Love, the end. Love, therefore, obviously is greater
than faith. It is greater than charity, again, because the whole
is greater than a part. Charity is only a little bit of Love, one
of the innumerable avenues of Love, and there may even be,
and there is, a great deal of charity without Love. It is a very
easy thing to toss a copper to a beggar on the street; it is gen-
erally an easier thing than not to do it. Yet Love is just as
often in the withholding. We purchase relief from the sym-
pathetic feelings roused by the spectacle of misery, at the cop-
per's cost. It is too cheap — too cheap for us, and often too
dear for the beggar. If we really loved him, we would either do
more for him, or less.

Then Paul contrasts it with sacrifice and martyrdom. And
I beg the little band of would-be missionaries — and I have the
honor to call some of you by this name for the first time — to
remember that though you give your bodies to be burned, and
have not Love, it profits nothing — nothing! You can take noth-
ing greater to the heathen world than the impress and reflec-
tion of the Love of God upon your own character. That is the
universal language. It will take you years to speak in Chinese,
or in the dialects of India. From the day you land, that lan-
guage of Love, understood by all, will be pouring forth its
unconscious eloquence. It is the man who is the missionary, it
is not his words. His character is his message. In the heart of
Africa, among the great lakes, I have come across black men
and women who remembered the only white man they ever saw
before — David Livingstone; and as you cross his footsteps in

I944 HENRY DRUMMOND

that dark continent, men's faces light up as they speak of the
kind doctor who passed there years ago. They could not under-
stand him; but they felt the Love that beat in his heart. Take
into your new sphere of labor, where you also mean to lay down
your life, that simple charm, and your lifework must succeed.
You can take nothing greater, you need take nothing less. It
is not worth while going if you take anything less. You may
take every accomplishment; you may be braced for every sac-
rifice; but if you give your body to be burned, and have not
Love, it will profit you and the cause of Christ nothing.

After contrasting Love with these things, Paul, in three verses,
very short, gives us an amazing analysis of what this supreme
thing is. I ask you to look at it. It is a compound thing, he
tells us. It is like light. As you have seen a man of science
take a beam of light and pass it through a crystal prism, as you
have seen it come out on the other side of the prism broken up
into its component colors — red and blue and yellow and violet
and orange, and all the colors of the rainbow — so Paul passes
this thing, Love, through the magnificent prism of his inspired
intellect, and it comes out on the other side broken up into its
elements. And in these few words we have what one might
call the Spectrum of Love, the analysis of Love. Will you ob-
serve what its elements are ? Will you notice that they have
common names; that they are virtues which we hear about every
day; that they are things which can be practiced by every man
in every place in life; and how, by a multitude of small things
and ordinary virtues, the supreme thing, the summum bonum, is
made up ?

The Spectrum of Love has nine ingredients: —

Patience, (<Love suffereth long."

Kindness, (<And is kind."

Generosity, (< Love envieth not. *

Humility, "Love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up.*

Courtesy, (<Doth not behave itself unseemly. "

Unselfishness, aSeeketh not her own."

Good Temper, (<Is not easily provoked.8

Guilelessness, <(Thinketh no evil."

Sincerity, "Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth."

Patience; kindness; generosity; humility; courtesy; unselfish-
ness; good temper; guilelessness ; sincerity — these make up the

HENRY DRUMMOND ,945

supreme gift, the stature of the perfect man. You will observe
that all are in relation to men, in relation to life, in relation to
the known to-day and the near to-morrow, and not to the un-
known eternity. We hear much of love to God ; Christ spoke much
of love to man. We make a great deal of peace with heaven;
Christ made much of peace on earth. Religion is not a strange
or added thing, but the inspiration of the secular life, the breath-
ing of an eternal spirit through this temporal world. The su-
preme thing, in short, is not a thing at all, but the giving of a
further finish to the multitudinous words and acts which make
up the sum of every common day.

There is no time to do more than make a passing note upon
each of these ingredients. Love is Patience. This is the normal
attitude of Love; Love passive, Love waiting to begin; not in
a hurry; calm; ready to do its work when the summons comes,
but meantime wearing the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit.
Love suffers long; beareth all things; believeth all things; hopeth
all things. For Love understands, and therefore waits.

Kindness. Love active. Have you ever noticed how much of
Christ's life was spent in doing kind things — in merely doing
kind things? Run over it with that in view, and you will find
that he spent a great proportion of his time simply in making
people happy, in doing good turns to people. There is only one
thing greater than happiness in the world, and that is holiness;
and it is not in our keeping, but what God has put in our power
is the happiness of those about us, and that is largely to be
secured by our being kind to them.

"The greatest thing,* says some one, "a man can do for his
Heavenly Father is to be kind to some of his other children.* I
wonder why it is that we are not all kinder than we are ? How
much the world needs it. How easily it is done. How instan-
taneously it acts. How infallibly it is remembered. How super-
abundantly it pays itself back — for there is no debtor in the
world so honorable, so superbly honorable, as Love. "Love
never faileth.8 Love is success. Love is happiness. Love is
life. "Love," I say with Browning, "is energy of life.0

" For life, with all it yields of joy or woe
And hope and fear,

Is just our chance o* the prize of learning love, —
How love might be, hath been indeed, and is.»

1946

HENRY DRUMMOND

Where Love is, God is. He that dwelleth in Love dwelleth in
God. God is Love. Therefore love. Without distinction, without
calculation, without procrastination, love. Lavish it upon the
poor, where it is very easy; especially upon the rich, who often
need it most; most of all upon our equals, where it is very diffi-
cult, and for whom, perhaps, we each do least of all. There is a
difference between trying to please and giving- pleasure. Give
pleasure. Lose no chance of giving pleasure. For that is the
ceaseless and anonymous triumph of a truly loving spirit. (< I
shall pass through this world but once. Any good thing there-
fore that I can do, or any kindness that I can show to any
human being, let me do it now. Let me not defer it or neglect
it, for I shall not pass this way again. w

Generosity. <( Love envieth not. * This is Love In competition
with others. Whenever you attempt a good work, you will find
other men doing the same kind of work, and probably doing it
better. Envy them not. Envy is a feeling of ill-will to those
who are in the same line as ourselves, a spirit of covetousness
and detraction. How little Christian work even is a protection
against un-Christian feeling. That most despicable of all the
unworthy moods which cloud a Christian's soul assuredly waits
for us on the threshold of every work, unless we are fortified
with this grace of magnanimity. Only one thing truly need the
Christian envy, the large, rich, generous soul which <( envieth not. *

And then, after having learned all that, you have to learn this
further thing, Humility — to put a seal upon your lips and forget
what you have done. After you have been kind, after Love has
stolen forth into the world and done its beautiful work, go back
into the shade again, and say nothing about it. Love hides even
from itself. Love waives even self-satisfaction. <( Love vaunteth
not itself, is not puffed up.*

The fifth ingredient is a somewhat strange one to find in this
summum bonum: Courtesy. This is Love in society, Love in rela-
tion to etiquette. <( Love doth not behave itself unseemly * Po-
liteness has been defined as love in trifles. Courtesy is said to
be love in little things. And the one secret of politeness is to
love. Love cannot behave itself unseemly. You can put the
most untutored persons into the highest society, and if they have
a reservoir of Love in their hearts, they will not behave them-
selves unseemly. They simply cannot do it. Carlyle said of
Robert Burns that there was no truer gentleman in Europe than

HENRY DRUMMOND

1947

the ploughman-poet. It was because he loved everything — the
mouse, and the daisy, and all the things, great and small, that
God had made. So with this simple passport he could mingle
with any society, and enter courts and palaces from his little cot-
tage on the banks of the Ayr. You know the meaning of the
word w gentleman. * It means a gentle man — a man who does
things gently with Love. And that is the whole art and mystery
of it. The gentle man cannot, in the nature of things, do an un-
gentle and ungentlemanly thing. The ungentle soul, the incon-
siderate, unsympathetic nature cannot do anything else. a Love
doth not behave itself unseemly."

Unselfishness. " Love seeketh not her own. ° Observe : Seeketh
not even that which is her own. In Britain, the Englishman is
devoted, and rightly, to his rights. But there come times when
a man may exercise even the higher right of giving up his
rights. Yet Paul does not summon us to give up our rights.
Love strikes much deeper. It would have us not seek them at.
all, ignore them, eliminate the personal element altogether from
our calculations. It is not hard to give up our rights. They
are often external. The difficult thing is to give up ourselves.
The more difficult thing still is not to seek things for ourselves
at all. After we have sought them, bought them, won them, de-
served them, we have taken the cream off them for ourselves
already. Little cross, then, to give them up. But not to seek
them, to look every man not on his own things, but on the
things of others — id opus est. "Seekest thou great things for
thyself " ? said the prophet ; <( seek them not. * Why ? Because
there is no greatness in things. Things cannot be great. The
only greatness is unselfish love. Even self-denial in itself is
nothing, is almost a mistake. Only a great purpose or a mightier
love can justify the waste. It is more difficult, I have said, not
to seek our own at all, than, having sought it, to give it up. I
must take that back. It is only true of a partly selfish heart.
Nothing is a hardship to Love, and nothing is hard. I believe
that Christ's <( yoke w is easy. Christ's * yoke " is just his way of
taking life. And I believe it is an easier way than any other.
I believe it is a happier way than any other. The most obvious
lesson in Christ's teaching is that there is no happiness in hav-
ing and getting anything, but only in giving. I repeat, there is
no happiness in having or in getting, but only in giving. And
half the world is on the wrong scent in pursuit of happiness.

1948

HENRY DRUMMOND

They think it consists in having and getting, and in being served
by others. It consists in giving, and in serving others. He that
would be great among you, said Christ, let him serve. He that
would be happy, let him remember that there is but one way —
it is more blessed, it is more happy, to give than to receive.

The next ingredient is a very remarkable one: Good Temper.
<( Love is not easily provoked. w Nothing could be more striking
than to find this here. We are inclined to look upon bad temper
as a very harmless weakness. We speak of it as a mere in-
firmity of nature, a family failing, a matter of temperament, not
a thing to take into very serious account in estimating a man's
character. And yet here, right in the heart of this analysis of
Love, it finds a place; and the Bible again and again returns
to condemn it as one of the most destructive elements in human
nature.

The peculiarity of ill-temper is that it is the vice of the vir-
tuous. It is often the one blot on an otherwise noble character.
You know men who are all but perfect, and women who would
be entirely perfect, but for an easily ruffled, quick-tempered, or
(< touchy w disposition. This compatibility of ill-temper with high
moral character is one of the strangest and saddest problems of
ethics. The truth is there are two great classes of sins — sins of
the Body, and sins of the Disposition. The Prodigal Son may
be taken as a type of the first, the Elder Brother of the second.
Now, society has no doubt whatever as to which of these is the
worse. Its brand falls, without a challenge, upon the Prodigal.
But are we right ? We have no balance to weigh one another's
sins, and coarser and finer are but human words; but fatilts in
the higher nature may be less venial than those in the lower,
and to the eye of him who is Love, a sin against Love may
seem a hundred times more base. No form of vice, not worldli-
ness, not greed of gold, not drunkenness itself, does more to un-
Christianize society than evil temper. For embittering life, for
breaking up communities, for destroying the most sacred relation-
ships, for devastating homes, for withering up men and women,
for taking the bloom of childhood, in short, for sheer gratuitous
misery-producing power, this influence stands alone. Look at the
Elder Brother, moral, hard-working, patient, dutiful — let him get
all credit for his virtues — look at this man, this baby, sulking
outside his own father's door. <( He was angry,* we read, "and
would not go in.* Look at the effect upon the father, upon the

HENRY DRUMMOND

1949

servants, upon the happiness of the guests. Judge of the effect
upon the Prodigal — and how many prodigals are kept out of
the Kingdom of God by the unlovely character of those who pro-
fess to be inside ? Analyze, as a study in Temper, the thunder-
cloud itself as it gathers upon the Elder Brother's brow. What
is it made of ? Jealousy, anger, pride, uncharity, cruelty, self-
righteousness, touchiness, doggedness, sullenness — these are the
ingredients of this dark and loveless soul. In varying propor-
tions, also, these are the ingredients of all ill-temper. Judge if
such sins of the disposition are not worse to live in, and for
others to live with, than sins of the body. Did Christ, indeed,
not answer the question himself when he said : (< I say unto you
that the publicans and the harlots go into the kingdom of Heaven
before you.B There is really no place in Heaven for a disposi-
tion like this. A man with such a mood could only make
Heaven miserable for all the people in it. Except, therefore,
such a man be born again, he cannot, he simply cannot, enter
the Kingdom of Heaven. For it is perfectly certain — and you
will not misunderstand me — that to enter Heaven a man must
take it with him.

You will see, then, why temper is significant. It is not in
what it is alone, but in what it reveals. This is why I take the
liberty now of speaking of it with such unusual plainness. It is
a test for love, a symptom, a revelation of an unloving nature at
bottom. It is the intermittent fever which bespeaks unintermit-
tent disease within; the occasional bubble escaping to the surface
which betrays some rottenness underneath; a sample of the most
hidden products of the soul dropped involuntarily when off one's
guard; in a word, the lightning form of a hundred hideous and
un-Christian sins. For a want of patience, a want of kindness, a
want of generosity, a want of courtesy, a want of unselfishness,
are all instantaneously symbolized in one flash of temper.

Hence it is not enough to deal with the temper. We must go
to the source and change the inmost nature, and the angry hu-
mors will die away of themselves. Souls are made sweet not by
taking the acid fluids out, but by putting something in — a great
Love, a new spirit, the spirit of Christ. Christ, the spirit of Christ
interpenetrating ours, sweetens, purifies, transforms all. This
only can eradicate what is wrong, work a chemical change, reno-
vate and regenerate and rehabilitate the inner man. Will power
does not change men. Time does not change men. Christ does.

HENRY DRUMMOND

Therefore, (< Let that mind be in you which was also in Christ
Jesus. w Some of us have not much time to lose. Remember,
once more, that this is a matter of life or death. I cannot help
speaking urgently, for myself, for yourselves. <( Whoso shall of-
fend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better
for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck and that
he were drowned in the depth of the sea. w That is to say, it is
the deliberate verdict of the Lord Jesus that it is better not to
live than not to love. It is better not to live than not to love.

Guilelessness and Sincerity may be dismissed almost with a
word. Guilelessness is the grace for suspicious people. And the
possession of it is the great secret of personal influence. You
will find, if you think for a moment, that the people who influ-
ence you are people who believe in you. In an atmosphere of
suspicion men shrivel up; but in that atmosphere they expand,
and find encouragement and educative fellowship. It is a won-
derful thing that here and there in this hard, uncharitable world
there should still be left a few rare souls who thin* no evil.
This is the great unworldliness. Love « thinketh no evil,8 im-
putes no motive, sees the bright side, puts the best construction
on every action. What a delightful state of mind to live in!
What a stimulus and benediction even to meet with it for a
day! To be trusted is to be saved. And if we try to influence
or elevate others, we shall soon see that success is in proportion
to their belief of our belief in them. For the respect of another
is the first restoration of the self-respect a man has lost; our
ideal of what he is becomes to him the hope and pattern of
what he may become.

<( Love rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth. w
I have called this Sincerity from the words rendered in the Au-
thorized Version by <( rejoiceth in the truth. * And, certainly,
were this the real translation, nothing could be more just. For
he who loves will love truth not less than men. He will rejoice
in the truth — rejoice not in what he has been taught to be-
lieve; not in this church's doctrine or in that; not in this ism
or in that ism; but <(in the Truth.8 He will accept only what
is real; he will strive to get at facts; he will search for truth
with a humble and unbiased mind, and cherish whatever he
finds at any sacrifice. But the more literal translation of the
Revised Version calls for just such a sacrifice for truth's sake
here. For what Paul really meant is, as we there read, (< Re-

HENRY DRUMMOND

195'

joiceth not in unrighteousness, but rejoiceth with the truth,* a
quality which probably no one English word — and certainly not
Sincerity — adequately defines. It includes, perhaps more strictly,
the self-restraint which refuses to make capital out of others'
faults; the charity which delights not in exposing the weakness
of others, but, (< covereth all things w ; the sincerity of purpose
which endeavors to see things as they are, and rejoices to find
them better than suspicion feared or calumny denounced.

So much for the analysis of Love. Now the business of our
lives is to have these things fitted into our characters. That is
the supreme work to which we need to address ourselves in this
world, to learn Love. Is life not full of opportunities for learn-
ing Love ? Every man and woman every day has a thousand of
them. The world is not a playground; it is a schoolroom. Life
is not a holiday, but an education. And the one eternal lesson
for us all is how better we can love. What makes a man a good
cricketer ? Practice. What makes a man a good artist, a good
sculptor, a good musician ? Practice. What makes a man a
good linguist, a good stenographer ? Practice. What makes a
man a good man ? Practice. Nothing else. There is nothing
capricious about religion. We do not get the soul in different
ways, under different laws, from those in which we get the body
and the mind. If a man does not exercise his arm, he develops
no biceps muscle; and if a man does not exercise his soul, he
acquires no muscle in his soul, no strength of character, no vigor
of moral fiber, nor beauty of spiritual growth. Love is not a
thing of enthusiastic emotion. It is a rich, strong, manly, vigor-
ous expression of the whole round Christian character — the
Christlike nature in its fullest development. And the constitu-
ents of this great character are only to be built up by ceaseless
practice.

What was Christ doing in the carpenter's shop? Practicing.
Though perfect, we read that he learned obedience, and grew
in wisdom and in favor with God. Do not quarrel therefore
with your lot in life. Do not complain of its never-ceasing
cares, its petty environment, the vexations you have to stand,
the small and sordid souls you have to live and work with.
Above all, do not resent temptation; do not be perplexed be-
cause it seems to thicken round you more and more, and ceases
neither for effort nor for agony nor prayer. That is your prac-
tice. That is the practice which God appoints you; and it is

HENRY DRUMMOND

having its work in making you patient, and humble, and gen-
erous, and unselfish, and kind, and courteous. Do not grudge
the hand that is molding the still too shapeless image within
you. It is growing more beautiful, though you see it not, and
every touch of temptation may add to its perfection. Therefore
keep in the midst of life. Do not isolate yourself. Be among
men, and among things, and among troubles, and difficulties, and
obstacles. You remember Goethe's words: ^Es bildet ein Talent
sick in der Stille, Dock ein Charakter in dem Strom der Welt."
(Talent develops itself in solitude; character in the stream of
life.) Talent develops itself in solitude — the talent of prayer,
of faith, of meditation, of seeing the unseen; character grows in
the stream of the world's life. That chiefly is where men are to
learn love.

How ? Now, how ? To make it easier, I have named a few
of the elements of Love. But these are only elements. Love it-
self can never be defined. Light is a something more than the
sum of its ingredients — a glowing, dazzling, tremulous ether.
And Love is something more than all its elements — a palpitating,
quivering, sensitive, living thing. By synthesis of all the colors,
men can make whiteness, they cannot make light. By synthesis
of all the virtues, men can make virtue, they cannot make Love.
How, then, are we to have this transcendent living whole con-
veyed into our souls ? We brace our wills to secure it. We try
to copy those who have it. We lay down rules about it. We
watch. We pray. But these things alone will not bring Love
into our nature. Love is an effect. And only as we fulfill the
right condition can we have the effect produced. Shall I tell
you what the cause is?

If you turn to the Revised Version of the First Epistle of
John, you will find these words: <(We love because he first loved
us." «We love,8 not «We love him." That is the way the old
version has it, and it is quite wrong. <( We love — because he
first loved us." Look at that word <( because." It is the cause
of which I have spoken. <( Because he first loved us," the effect
follows that we love, we love him, we love all men. We cannot
help it. Because he loved us, we love, we love everybody. Our
heart is slowly changed. Contemplate the love of Christ, and
you will love. Stand before that mirror, reflect Christ's charac-
ter, and you will be changed into the same image from tender-
ness to tenderness. There is no other way. You cannot love to

HENRY DRUMMOND

order. You can only look at the lovely object, and fall in love
with it, and grow into likeness to it. And so look at this Per-
fect Character, this Perfect Life. Look at the great Sacrifice as
he laid down himself, all through life, and upon the Cross of
Calvary, and you must love him. And loving him, you must be-
come like him. Love begets love. It is a process of induction.
Put a piece of iron in the presence of an electrified body, and
that piece of iron for a time becomes electrified. It is changed
into a temporary magnet in the mere presence of a permanent
magnet, and as long as you leave the two side by side, they are
both magnets alike. Remain side by side with him who loved
us, and gave himself for us, and you, too, will become a perma-
nent magnet, a permanently attractive force; and like him you
will draw all men unto you, like him you will be drawn unto all
men. That is the inevitable effect of Love. Any man who ful-
fills that cause must have that effect produced in him. Try to
give up the idea that religion conies to us by chance, or by
mystery, or by caprice. It comes to us by natural law, or by
supernatural law, for all law is Divine. Edward Irving went to
see a dying boy once, and when he entered the room he just
put his hand on the sufferer's head, and said, (< My boy, God
loves you," and went away. And the boy started from his bed,
and called out to the people in the house, w God loves me ! God
loves me!" It changed that boy. The sense that God loved
him overpowered him, melted him down, and began the creating
of a new heart in him. And that is how the love of God melts
down the unlovely heart in man, and begets in him the new
creature, who is patient and humble and gentle and unselfish.
And there is no other way to get it. There is no mystery about
it. We love others, we love everybody, we love our enemies, be-
cause he first loved us.

Now I have a closing sentence or two to add about Paul's
reason for singling out Love as the supreme possession. It is
a very remarkable reason. In a single word it is this: it lasts.
"Love," urges Paul, "never faileth." Then he begins again one
of his marvelous lists of the great things of the day, and ex-
poses them one by one. He runs over the things that men
thought were going to last, and shows that they are all fleeting,
temporary, passing away.

(< Whether there be prophecies, they shall fail.0 It was the
mother's ambition for her boy in those days that he should
v — 123

HENRY DRUMMOND

become a prophet. For hundreds of years God had never spoken
by means of any prophet, and at that time the prophet was
greater than the King. Men waited wistfully for another mes-
senger to come, and hung upon his lips when he appeared as
upon the very voice of God. Paul says: (< Whether there be
prophecies, they shall fail." This book is full of prophecies.
One by one they have "failed"; that is, having been fulfilled,
their work is finished; they have nothing more to do now in the
world except to feed a devout man's faith.

Then Paul talks about tongues. That was another thing that
was greatly coveted. (< Whether there be tongues, they shall
cease." As we all know, many, many centuries have passed
since tongues have been known in this world. They have ceased.
Take it in any sense you like. Take it, for illustration merely, as
languages in general — a sense which was not in Paul's mind at
all, and which, though it cannot give us the specific lesson, will
point the general truth. Consider the words in which these
chapters were written — Greek. It has gone. Take the Latin —
the other great tongue of those days. It ceased long ago. Look
at the Indian language. It is ceasing. The language of Wales,
of Ireland, of the Scottish Highlands, is dying before our eyes.
The most popular book in the English tongue at the present
time, except the Bible, is one of Dickens's works, his < Pickwick
Papers.* It is largely written in the language of London street
life, and experts assure us that in fifty years it will be unintel-
ligible to the average English reader.

Then Paul goes further, and with even greater boldness adds:
(< Whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. " The wis-
dom of the ancients, where is it ? It is wholly gone. A school-
boy to-day knows m&re than Sir Isaac Newton knew. His knowl-
edge has vanished away. You put yesterday's newspaper in the
fire. Its knowledge has vanished away. You buy the old edi-
tions of the great encyclopaedias for a few pence. Their knowl-
edge has vanished away. Look how the coach has been super-
seded by the use of steam. Look how electricity has superseded
that, and swept a hundred almost new inventions into oblivion.
One of the greatest living authorities, Sir William Thompson, said
the other day : ft The steam engine is passing away. " (< Whether
there be knowledge, it shall vanish away." At every workshop
you will see, in the back yard, a heap of old iron, a few wheels,
a few levers, a few cranks, broken and eaten with rust. Twenty

HENRY DRUMMOND

years ago that was the pride of the city. Men flocked in from
the country to see the great invention; now it is superseded, its
day is done. And all the boasted science and philosophy of
this day will soon be old. But yesterday, in the University of
Edinburgh, the greatest figure in the faculty was Sir James
Simpson, the discoverer of chloroform. The other day his suc-
cessor and nephew, Professor Simpson, was asked by the librarian
of the University to go to the library and pick out the books on
his subject that were no longer needed. And his reply to the
librarian was this : " Take every text-book that is more than ten
years old, and put it down in the cellar." Sir James Simpson
was a great authority only a few years ago; men came from all
parts of the earth to consult him; and almost the whole teaching
of that time is consigned by the science of to-day to oblivion.
And in every branch of science it is the same. "Now we know
in part. We see through a glass darkly."

Can you tell me anything that is going to last ? Many things
Paul did not condescend to name. He did not mention money,
fortune, fame; but he picked out the great things of his time,
the things the best men thought had something in them, and
brushed them peremptorily aside. Paul had no charge against
these things in themselves. All he said about them was that
they would not last. They were great things, but not supreme
things. There were things beyond them. What we are stretches
past what we do, beyond what we possess. Many things that
men denounce as sins are not sins; but they are temporary. And
that is a favorite argument of the New Testament. John says of
the world, not that it is wrong, but simply that it " passeth
away." There is a great deal in the world that is delightful and
beautiful; there is a great deal in it that is great and engrossing;
but it will not last. All that is in the world, the lust of the eye,
the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life, are but for a little
while. Love not the world therefore. Nothing that it contains
is worth the life and consecration of an immortal soul. The im-
mortal soul must give itself to something that is immortal. And
the only immortal things are these : " Now abideth faith, hope,
love, but the greatest of these is love."

Some think the time may come when two of these three things
will also pass away — faith into sight, hope into fruition. Paul
does not say so. We know but little now about the conditions of
the life that is to come. But what is certain is that Love must

HENRY DRUMMOND

last. God, the eternal God, is Love. Covet, therefore, that ever-
lasting gift, that one thing which it is certain is going to stand,
that one coinage which will be current in the universe when all
the other coinages of all the nations of the world shall be use-
less and unhonored. You will give yourselves to many things,
give yourself first to Love. Hold things in their proportion.
Hold things in their proportion. Let at least the first great ob-
ject of our lives be to achieve the character defended in these
words, the character — and it is the character of Christ — which is
built round Love.

I have said this thing is eternal. Did you ever notice how
continually John associates love and faith with eternal life ? I
was not told when I was a boy that <(God so loved the world
that he gave his only-begotten Son that whosoever believeth in
him should have everlasting life.* What I was told, I remem-
ber, was, that God so loved the world that if I trusted in him I
was to have a thing called peace, or I was to have rest, or
I was to have joy, or I was to have safety. But I had to find
out for myself that whosoever trusteth in him — that is, whoso-
ever loveth him, for trust is only the avenue to Love — hath
everlasting life. The Gospel offers a man life. Never offer men
a thimbleful of Gospel. Do not offer them merely joy, or merely
peace, or merely rest, or merely safety; tell them how Christ
came to give men a more abundant life than they have, a life
abundant in love, and therefore abundant in salvation for them-
selves, and large in enterprise for the alleviation and redemption
of the world. Then only can the Gospel take hold of the whole
of a man, body, soul, and spirit, and give to each part of his nat-
ure its exercise and reward. Many of the current Gospels are
addressed only to a part of man's nature. They offer peace, not
life; faith, not Love; justification, not regeneration. And men
slip back again from such religion because it has never really
held them. Their nature was not all in it. It offered no deeper
and gladder life-current than the life that was lived before.
Surely it stands to reason that only a fuller love can compete
with the love of the world.

To love abundantly is to live abundantly, and to love forever
is to live forever. Hence, eternal life is inextricably bound up
with Love. We want to live forever for the same reason that we
want to live to-morrow. Why do you want to live to-morrow ?
It is because there is some one who loves you, and whom you

HENRY DRUMMOND

want to see to-morrow, and be with, and love back. There is no
other reason why we should live on than that we love and are
beloved. It is when a man has no one to love him that he
commits suicide. So long as he has friends, those who love him
and whom he loves, he will live, because to live is to love. Be
it but the love of a dog, it will keep him in life; but let that go
and he has no contact with life, no reason to live. He dies by
his own hand. Eternal life also is to know God, and God is
Love. This is Christ's own definition. Ponder it. "This is life
eternal, that they might know thee, the only true God, and Jesus
Christ whom thou hast sent." Love must be eternal. It is
what God is. On the last analysis, then, Love is life. Love never
faileth, and life never faileth, so long as there is Love. That is
the philosophy of what Paul is showing us; the reason why,
in the nature of things, Love should be the supreme thing — be-
cause it is going to last; because, in the nature of things, it is
an eternal life. It is a thing that we are living now, not that
we get when we die; that we shall have a poor chance of getting
when we die, unless we are living now. No worse fate can befall
a man in this world than to live and grow old alone, unloving
and unloved. To be lost is to live in an unregenerate condition,
loveless and unloved; and to be saved is to love; and he that
dwelleth in love dwelleth already in God. For God is Love.

Now I have all but finished. How many of you will join
me in reading this chapter once a week for the next three
months? A man did that once, and it changed his whole life.
Will you do it ? It is for the greatest thing in the world. You
might begin by reading it every day, especially the verses which
describe the perfect character. <( Love suffereth long, and is
kind; love envieth not; love vaunteth not itself." Get these in-
gredients into your life. Then everything that you do is eternal.
It is worth doing. It is worth giving time to. No man can be-
come a saint in his sleep; and to fulfill the condition required
demands a certain amount of prayer and meditation and time,
just as improvement in any direction, bodily or mental, requires
preparation and care. Address yourselves to that one thing; at
any cost have this transcendent character exchanged for yours.
You will find as you look back upon your life that the moments
that stand out, the moments when you have really lived, are the
moments when you have done things in a spirit of love. As
memory scans the past, above and beyond all the transitory

HENRY DRUMMOND

pleasures of life, there leap forward those supreme hours when
you have been enabled to do unnoticed kindnesses to those round
about you, things too trifling to speak about, but which you feel
have entered into your eternal life. I have seen almost all the
beautiful things God has made; I have enjoyed almost every
pleasure that he has planned for man; and yet as I look back I
see standing out above all the life that has gone, four or five
short experiences when the love of God reflected itself in some
poor imitation, some small act of love of mine, and these seem
to be the things which alone of all one's life abide. Everything
else in all our lives is transitory. Every other good is visionary.
But the acts of Love which no man knows about, or can ever
know about — they never fail.

In the book of Matthew, where the Judgment Day is depicted
for us in the imagery of One seated upon a throne and dividing
the sheep from the goats, the test of a man then is not, <( How
have I believed ? B but (< How have I loved ? w The test of re-
ligion, the final test of religion, is not religiousness, but Love.
I say, the final test of religion at that great day is not religious-
ness, but Love; not what I have done, not what I have believed,
not what I have achieved, but how I have discharged the com-
mon charities of life. Sins of commission in that awful indict-
ment are not even referred to. By what we have not done, by
sins of omission, we are judged. It could not be otherwise.
For the withholding of love is the negation of the spirit of
Christ, the proof that we never knew him, that for us he lived
in vain. It means that he suggested nothing in all our thoughts,
that he inspired nothing in all our lives, that we were not once
near enough to him to be seized with the spell of his compassion
for the world. It means that —

*I lived for myself, I thought for myself,

For myself, and none beside —
Just as if Jesus had never lived,
As if he had never

It is the Son of Man before whom the nations of the world
shall be gathered. It is in the presence of Humanity that we
shall be charged. And the spectacle itself, the mere sight of it,
will silently judge each one. Those will be there whom we have
met and helped; or there, the unpitied multitude whom we neg-
lected or despised. No other witness need be summoned. No

HENRY DRUMMOND

1959

other charge than lovelessness shall be preferred. Be not de-
ceived. The words which all of us shall one day hear sound
not of theology, but of life; not of churches and saints, but of
the hungry and the poor; not of creeds and doctrines, but of
shelter and clothing; not of Bibles and prayer-books, but of cups
of cold water in the name of Christ. Thank God the Christian-
ity of to-day is coming nearer the world's need. Live to help
that on. Thank God, men know better, by a hair's breadth, what
religion is, what God is, who Christ is, where Christ is. Who
is Christ? He who fed the hungry, clothed the naked, visited
the sick. And where is Christ ? Where ? — whoso shall receive
a little child in my name receiveth me. And who are Christ's ?
Every one that loveth is born of God.

PREPARATION FOR LEARNING

BEFORE an artist can do anything, the instrument must be
tuned. Our astronomers at this moment are preparing for
an event which happens only once or twice in a lifetime;
the total eclipse of the sun in the month of August. They have
begun already. They are making preparations. At chosen sta-
tions, in different parts of the world, they are spending all the
skill that science can suggest upon the construction of their in-
struments; and up to the last moment they will be busy adjust-
ing them; and the last day will be the busiest of all, because
then they must have the glasses and the mirrors polished to the
last degree. They have to have the lenses in place and focused
upon this spot before the event itself takes place.

Everything will depend upon the instruments which you bring
to this experiment. Everything will depend upon it; and there-
fore fifteen minutes will not be lost if we each put our instru-
ment into the best working order we can. I have spoken of
lenses, and that reminds me that the instrument which we bring
to bear upon truth is a compound thing. It consists of many
parts. Truth is not a product of the intellect alone; it is a
product of the whole nature. The body is engaged in it, and
the mind, and the soul.

The body is engaged in it. Of course, a man who has his
body run down, or who is dyspeptic, or melancholy, sees every-

1960

HENRY DRUMMOND

thing black, and distorted, and untrue. But I am not going to
dwell upon that. Most of you seem in pretty fair working order,
so far as your bodies are concerned; only it is well to remem-
ber that we are to give our bodies a living sacrifice — not a half-
dead sacrifice, as some people seem to imagine. There is no
virtue in emaciation. I don't know if you have any tendency in
that direction in America, but certainly we are in danger of
dropping into it now and then in England, and it is just as well
to bear in mind our part of the lens — a very compound and de-
licate lens — with which we have to take in truth.

Then comes a very important part: the intellect — which is
one of the most useful servants of truth; and I need not tell
you as students, that the intellect will have a great deal to do
with your reception of truth. I was told that it was said at
these conferences last year, that a man must crucify his intellect.
I venture to contradict the gentlemen who made that statement.
I am quite sure no such statement could ever have been made
in your hearing — that we were to crucify our intellects. We
can make no progress without the full use of all the intellectual
powers that God has endowed us with.

But more important than either of these is the moral nature

— the moral and spiritual nature. Some of you remember a ser-
mon of Robertson of Brighton entitled, ( Obedience the Organ
of Spiritual Knowledge.* A very startling title! — Obedience
the Organ of Spiritual Knowledge.* The Pharisees asked about
Christ : <( How knoweth this man letters, never having learned ? *
How knoweth this man, never having learned ? The organ of
knowledge is not nearly so much mind as the organ that Christ
used, namely, obedience; and that was the organ which he him-
self insisted upon when he said : <( He that willeth to do his
will shall know of the doctrine whether it be of God.* You
have all noticed, of course, that the words in the original are:
<( If any man will to do his will, he shall know of the doctrine. >J
It doesn't read : <( If any do his will, w which no man can do per-
fectly; but if any man be simply willing to do his will, — if he
has an absolutely undivided mind about it, — that man will know
what truth is and know what falsehood is; a stranger will he not
follow. And that is by far the best source of spiritual knowledge
on every account — obedience to God — absolute sincerity and loy-
alty in following Christ. ' (< If any man do his will, he shall know "

— a very remarkable association of knowledge, a thing which is

HENRY DRUMMOND

1961

usually considered quite intellectual, with obedience, which is
moral and spiritual.

But even although we use all these three different parts of
the instrument, we have not at all got at the complete method of
learning. There is a little preliminary that the astronomer has
to do before he can make his observation. He has to take the
cap off his telescope. Many a man thinks he is looking at truth
when he is only looking at the cap. Many a time I have looked
down my microscope and thought I was looking at the diatom
for which I had long been searching, and found I had simply
been looking at a speck of dust upon the lens itself. Many a
man thinks he is looking at truth, when he is only looking at the
spectacles he has put on to see it with. He is looking at his
own spectacles. Now, the common spectacles that a man puts
on, — I suppose the creed in which he has been brought up, — if
a man looks at that, let him remember that he is not looking at
truth; he is looking at his own spectacles. There is no more
important lesson that we have to carry with us than that truth is
not to be found in what I have been taught. That is not truth.
Truth is not what I have been taught. If it were so, that would
apply to the Mormon, it would apply to the Brahman, it would
apply to the Buddhist. Truth would be to everybody just what
he had been taught. Therefore, let us dismiss from our minds
the predisposition to regard that which we have been brought up
in as being necessarily the truth. I must say it is very hard to
shake oneself free altogether from that. I suppose it is impos-
sible.

But you see the reasonableness of giving up that as your
view of truth when you come to apply it all around. If that
were the definition of truth, truth would be just what one's par-
ents were — it would be a thing of hereditary transmission and
not a thing absolute in itself. Now, let me venture to ask you
to take that cap off. Take that cap off now and make up your
minds you are going to look at truth naked — in its reality, as it
is, not as it is reflected through other minds, or through any the-
ology, however venerable.

Then there is one thing I think we must be careful about,
and that is, besides having the cap off and having all the lenses
clean and in position, to have the instrument rightly focused.
Everything may be right, and yet when you go and look at the
object, you see things altogether falsely. You see things not

1962

HENRY DRUMMOND

only blurred, but you see things out of proportion. And there is
nothing more important we have to bear in mind in running
our eye over successive theological truths, or religious truths,
than that there is a proportion in those truths, and that we must
see them in their proportion, or we see them falsely. A man
may take a dollar or a half-dollar and hold it to his eye so
closely that he will hide the sun from him. Or he may so focus
his telescope that a fly or a bowlder may be as large as a moun-
tain. A man may hold a certain doctrine very intensely — a
doctrine which has been looming upon his horizon for the last
six months, let us say, and which has thrown everything else out
of proportion, it has become so big itself. Now, let us beware
of distortion in the arrangement of the religious truths which we
hold. It is almost impossible to get things in their true propor-
tion and symmetry, but this is the thing we must be constantly
aiming at. We are told in the Bible to "add to your faith vir-
tue, and to virtue knowledge, and to knowledge balance,8 as the
word literally means — <( balance.* It is a word taken from the
orchestra, where all the parts — the sopranos, the basses, the altos,
and the tenors, and all the rest of them — must be regulated.
If you have too much of the bass, or too much of the soprano,
there is want of harmony. That is what I mean by the want
of proper focus — by the want of proper balance — in the truths
which we all hold. It will never do to exaggerate one truth at
the expense of another, and a truth may be turned into a false-
hood very, very 'easily, by simply being either too much enlarged
or too much diminished. I once heard of some blind men who
were taken to see a menagerie. They had gone around the ani-
mals, and four of them were allowed to touch an elephant as
they went past. They were discussing afterward what kind of a
creature the elephant was. One man, who had touched its tail,
said the elephant was like a rope. Another of the blind men,
who had touched his hind limb, said : (< No such thing ! the ele-
phant is like the trunk of a tree." Another, who had felt its
sides, said: "That is all rubbish. An elephant is a thing like a
wall.* And the fourth, who had felt its ear, said that an ele-
phant was like none of those things; it was like a leather bag.
,Now, men look at truth at different bits of it, and they see dif-
ferent things, of course, and they are very apt to imagine that
the thing which they have seen is the whole affair — the whole
thing. In reality, we can only see a very little bit at a time,

HENRY DRUMMOND

1963

and we must, I think, learn to believe that other men can see
bits of truth as well as ourselves. Your views are just what
you see with your own eyes; and my views are just what I see;
and what I see depends on just where I stand, and what you
see depends on just where you stand; and truth is very much
bigger than an elephant, and we are very much blinder than any
of those blind men, as we come to look at it.

Christ has made us aware that it is quite possible for a man
to have ears and hear nothing, and to have eyes and see not.
One of the Disciples saw a great deal of Christ, and he never
knew him. " Have I been so long time with you, Philip, and
yet hast thou not known me ? " w He that hath seen me hath
seen the father also.* Philip had never seen him. He had been
looking at his own spectacles, perhaps, or at something else, and
had never seen him. If the instrument had been in order, he
would have seen Christ. And I would just add this one thing
more: the test of value of the different verities of truth depends
upon one thing: whether they have or have not a sanctifying
power. That is another remarkable association in the mind of
Christ — of sanctification with truth — thinking and holiness — not
to be found in any of the sciences or in any of the philosophies.
It is peculiar to the Bible. Christ said, (< Sanctify them through
thy truth. Thy Word is truth." Now, the value of any question
— the value of any theological question — depends upon whether
it has a sanctifying influence. If it has not, don't bother about
it. Don't let it disturb your minds until you have exhausted all
truths that have sanctification within them. If a truth make a
man a better man, then let him focus his instrument upon it and
get all the acquaintance with it he can. If it is the profane
babbling of science, falsely so called, or anything that has an in-
jurious effect upon the moral and spiritual nature of a man, it is
better let alone. And above all, let us remember to hold the
truth in love. That is the most sanctifying influence of all. And
if we can carry away the mere lessons of toleration, and leave
behind us our censoriousness, and criticalness, and harsh judg-
ments upon one another, and excommunicating of everybody ex-
cept those who think exactly as we do, the time we shall spend
here will not be the least useful parts of our lives.

HENRY DRUMMOND

A TALK ON BOOKS
(An Address Delivered in New York City in 1887)

MY OBJECT at this time is to give encouragement and help to
the « duffers,* the class of « hopeful duffers." Brilliant
students have every help, but second-class students are
sometimes neglected and disheartened. I have great sympathy
"with the duffers," because I was only a second-rate student
myself. The subject of my talk with you is ( Books. *

A gentleman in Scotland, who has an excellent library, has
placed on one side of the room his heavy sombre tomes, and
over those shelves the form of an owl. On the other side of
the room are arranged the lighter books, and over these is the
figure of a bird known in Scotland as "the dipper." This is a
most sensible division. The "owl books" are to be mastered, —
the great books, such as Gibbon's <Rome,) Butler's 'Analogy,'
Dorner's * Person of Christ,* and text-books of philosophy and
science. Every student should master one or two, at least, of
such <(owl books," to exercise his faculties, and give him concen-
trativeness. I do not intend to linger at this side of the library,
but will cross over to the " dipper books, " which are for occa-
sional reading — for stimulus, for guidance, recreation. I will be
autobiographical.

When I was a student in lodgings, I began to form a library,
which I arranged along the mantelshelf of my room. It did not
contain many books; but it held as many as some students could
afford to purchase, and, if wisely chosen, as many as one could
well use. My first purchase was a volume of extracts from
Ruskin's works, which then, in their complete form, were very
costly. Ruskin taught me to use my eyes. Men are born blind
as bats or kittens, and it is long before men's eyes are opened;
some men never learn to see as long as they live. I often won-
dered, if there was a Creator, why he had not made the world
more beautiful. Would not crimson and scarlet colors have been
far richer than green and brown ? But Ruskin taught me to
see the world as it is, and it soon became a new world to me,
full of charm and loveliness. Now I can linger beside a ploughed
field and revel in the affluence of color and shade which are to
be seen in the newly-turned furrows, and I gaze in wonder at
the liquid amber of the two feet of air above the brown earth.

HENRY DRUMMOND

1965

Now the colors and shades of the woods are a delight, and at
every turn my eyes are surprised at fresh charms. The rock
which I had supposed to be naked I saw clothed with lichens —
patches of color — marvelous organisms, frail as the ash of a
cigar, thin as brown paper, yet growing and fructifying in spite
of wind and rain, of scorching sun and biting frost. I owe much
to Ruskin for teaching me to see.

Next on my mantelshelf was Emerson. I discovered Emer-
son for myself. When I asked what Emerson was, one authority
pronounced him a great man; another as confidently wrote him
down a humbug. So I silently stuck to Emerson. Carlyle I
could not read. After wading through a page of Carlyle, I felt
as if I had been whipped. Carlyle scolded too much for my
taste, and he seemed to me a great man gone delirious. But in
Emerson I found what I would fain have sought in Carlyle; and,
moreover, I was soothed and helped. Emerson taught me to see
with the mind.

Next on my shelf came two or three volumes of George
Eliot's works, from which I gained some knowledge and a fur-
ther insight into many philosophical and social questions. But
my chief debt to George Eliot at that time was that she intro-
duced me to pleasant characters, — nice people, and especially to
one imaginary young lady whom I was in love with one whole
winter, and it diverted my mind in solitude. A good novel is a
valuable acquisition, and it supplies companionship of a pleasant
kind.

Amongst my small residue of books, I must name Channing's
works. Before I read Channing I doubted whether there was a
God; at least I would rather have believed that there was no
God. After becoming acquainted with Channing, I could believe
there was a God, and I was glad to believe in him, for I felt
drawn to the good and gracious Sovereign of all things. Still, I
needed further what I found in F. W. Robertson, the British
officer in the pulpit, — bravest, truest of men, — who dared to
speak what he believed at all hazards. From Robertson I learned
that God is human; that we may have fellowship with him be-
cause he sympathizes with us.

One day as I was looking over my mantelshelf library, it
suddenly struck me that all these authors of mine were heretics
— these were dangerous books. Undesignedly I had found stim-
ulus and help from teachers who were not credited by orthodoxy.

1966

HENRY DRUMMOND

And I have since found that much of the good to be got from
books is to be gained from authors often classed as dangerous,
for these provoke inquiry and exercise one's powers. Towards
the end of my shelf I had one or two humorous works, chief
amongst them all being Mark Twain. His humor is peculiar;
broad exaggeration, a sly simplicity, comical situations, and sur-
prising turns of expression; but to me it has been a genuine
fund of humor. The humorous side of a student's nature needs
to be considered, and where it is undeveloped it should be culti-
vated. I have known many instances of good students who
seemed to have no sense of humor.

I will not recommend any of my favorite books to another;
they have done me good, but they might not suit another man.
Every man must discover his own books; but when he has found
what fits in with his tastes, what stimulates him to thought, what
supplies a want in his nature, and exalts him in conception and
feelings, that is the book for the student, be it what it may. This
brings me to speak of the friendship of books.

To fall in love with a good book is one of the greatest events
that can befall us. It is to have a new influence pouring itself
into our life, a new teacher to inspire and refine us, a new
friend to be by our side always, who, when life grows narrow
and weary, will take us into his wider and calmer and higher
world. Whether it be biography, introducing us to some humble
life made great by duty done; or history, opening vistas into the
movements and destinies of nations that have passed away; or
poetry, making music of all the common things around us, and
filling the fields, and the skies, and the work of the city and the
cottage, with eternal meanings — whether it be these, or story
books, or religious books, or science, no one can become the
friend even of one good book without being made wiser and
better. Do not think I am going to recommend any such book
to you. The beauty of a friend is that we discover him. And
we must each taste the books that are accessible to us for our-
selves. Do not be disheartened at first if you like none of them.
That is possibly their fault, not yours. But search and search
till you find what you like. In amazingly cheap form, — for a
few pence indeed, — almost all the best books are now to be had;
and I think every one owes it as a sacred duty to his mind to
start a little library of his own. How much do we not do for
our bodies ? How much thought and money do they not cost

HENRY DRUMMOND

1967

us ? And shall we not think a little, and pay a little, for the
clothing and adorning of the imperishable mind ? This private
library may begin, perhaps, with a single volume, and grow at
the rate of one or two a year; but these, well-chosen and well-
mastered, will become such a fountain of strength and wisdom
that each shall be eager to add to his store. A dozen books ac-
cumulated in this way may be better than a whole library. Do
not be distressed if you do not like time-honored books, or class-
ical works, or recommended books. Choose for yourself; trust
yourself; plant yourself on your own instincts; that which is nat-
ural for us, that which nourishes us, and gives us appetite, is
that which is right for us. We have all different minds, and we
are all at different stages of growth. Some other day we may
find food in the recommended book, though we should possibly
starve on it to-day. The mind develops and changes, and the
favorities of this year, also, may one day cease to interest us.
Nothing better, indeed, can happen to us than to lose interest in
a book we have often read; for it means that it has done its
work upon us, and brought us up to its level, and taught us all
it had to teach.

1968

TIMOTHY DWIGHT

(1752-1817)

IIMOTHY DWIGHT, a grandson of Jonathan Edwards, inherited
his ability as an orator and writer. He was born at North-
ampton, Massachusetts, May i4th, 1752. Educated for the
Congregational ministry, he rose to great eminence as an author,
preacher, and educator. He was President of Yale College from 1795
to 1817, dying at New Haven, Connecticut, January nth of the latter
year. In addition to theological works and a book of travels, he
wrote several poems.

THE PURSUIT OF EXCELLENCE
(From a Sermon on the Sovereignty of God, Jeremiah x. 23)

HUMAN life is ordinarily little else than a collection of disap-
pointments. Rarely is the life of man such as he designs
it shall be. Often do we fail of pursuing at all the busi-
ness originally in our view. The intentional farmer becomes a
mechanic, a seaman, a merchant, a lawyer, a physician, or a divine.
The very place of settlement, and of residence through life, is
often different and distant from that which was originally con-
templated. Still more different is the success which follows our
efforts.

A principal design of the mind in laboring for these things
is to become superior to others. But almost all rich men are
obliged to see, and usually with no small anguish, others richer
than themselves; honorable men, others more honorable; voluptu-
ous men, others who enjoy more pleasure. The great end of the
strife is therefore unobtained, and the happiness expected never
found. Even the successful competitor in the race utterly misses
his aim. The real enjoyment existed, although it was unper-
ceived by him, in the mere strife for superiority. When he has
outstripped all his rivals, the contest is at an end, and his
spirits, which were invigorated only by contending, languish for
want of a competitor.

TIMOTHY DWIGHT

1969

Besides, the happiness in view was only the indulgence of
pride, or mere animal pleasure. Neither of these can satisfy or
endure. A rational mind may be, and often is, so narrow and
groveling, as not to aim at any higher good, to understand its
nature, or to believe its existence. Still, in its original constitu-
tion, it was formed with a capacity for intellectual and moral
good, and was destined to find in this good its only satisfaction.
Hence, no inferior good will fill its capacity or its desires. Nor
can this bent of its nature ever be altered. Whatever other en-
joyment, therefore, it may attain, it will, without this, still crave
and still be unhappy. . . .

There are two modes in which men seek happiness in the en-
joyments of the present world. (< Most persons freely indulge
their wishes, and intend to find objects sufficient in number and
value to satisfy them.M A few waim at satisfaction by propor-
tioning their desires to the number and measures of their proba-
able gratifications." . . . Desires indulged grow faster and
further than gratifications extend. Ungratified desire is misery.
Expectations eagerly indulged and terminated by disappointment
are often exquisite misery. But how frequently are expecta-
tions raised only to be disappointed, and desires let loose, only
to terminate in distress! The child pines for a toy; the moment
he possesses it he throws it by, and cries for another. When
they are piled up in heaps around him, he looks at them without
pleasure, and leaves them without regret. He knew not that all
the good which they could yield lay in expectation, nor that his
wishes for more would increase faster than toys could be multi-
plied, and is unhappy at last for the same reason as at first; his
wishes are ungratified. Still indulging them and still believing
that the gratification of them will furnish the enjoyment for
which he pines, he goes on, only to be unhappy.

Men are merely taller children. Honor, wealth, and splendor
are the toys for which grown children pine; but which, however
accumulated, leave them still disappointed and unhappy. God
never designed that intelligent beings should be satisfied with
these enjoyments. By his wisdom and goodness they were formed
to derive their happiness from virtue.

Moderated desires constitute a character fitted to acquire all the
good which this world can yield. He, who is prepared, in what-
ever situation he is, therewith to be content, has learned effectu-
ally the science of being happy, and possesses the alchymic stone,
v — 124

1970

TIMOTHY DWIGHT

which will change every metal into gold. Such a man will smile
upon a stool, while Alexander at his side sits weeping on the
throne of the world.

The doctrine of the text teaches you irresistibly that, since
you cannot command gratifications, you should command your
desires, and that, as the events of life do not accord with your
wishes, your wishes should accord with them. Multiplied enjoy-
ments fall to but few men, and are no more rationally expected
than the highest prize in a lottery. But a well-regulated mind,
a dignified independence of the world, and a wise preparation to
possess one's soul in patience, whatever circumstances may exist,
is in the power of every man, and is greater wealth than that of
both Indies, and greater honor than Csesar ever acquired. . . .

GEORGE F. EDMUNDS
(1828)

|OR many years Senator George F. Edmunds, of Vermont, was
recognized as the best constitutional lawyer on the Repub-
lican side of the Senate chamber, and his presentation of
the Constitutional Principles of the Electoral Commission was gener-
ally accepted as an authoritative expression of the views of his party.
He was born at Richmond, Vermont, February ist, 1828. Elected to
the Senate in 1866, he held his place until 1891, and he might have
held it indefinitely had he not preferred to retire. He was the author
of the Edmunds Bill abolishing polygamy, and was, perhaps, more
prominently identified with that measure than with any other, though
he was largely instrumental in the settlement of the contested elec-
tion of 1876, and was a member of the Electoral Commission.

THE CONSTITUTION AND THE ELECTORAL COMMISSION
(From a Speech Delivered in the United States Senate, January 2oth, 1899)

To DO an act which the Constitution commands is one thing;
to decide a dispute is an entirely different thing. Whatever
the Constitution commands, you are to do. Whatever the
Constitution commands the Executive, he is to do. Whatever
the Constitution authorizes to be decided, the Judiciary, or some
other tribunal fixed by law or by the Constitution itself, is to
decide. Those are the only three ways in which Government
can express itself. So that whatever you are to do, whatever
the claims at the other end of the Capitol may be that they
have a right to do, whatever the Vice- President may say that
he has a right to do under the Constitution when the President
has not been elected, whatever you, the President of the Sen-
ate, have a right to do when both of them are unable to per-
form the duties of their office, there still remains behind it all,
in the very essence of government, the necessity of having a
power that binds you all at the same time to determine when
and under what circumstances each of you shall bring your forces

GEORGE F. EDMUNDS

into play; and as the Constitution has not fixed that tribunal, it
has declared that Congress shall pass every law which shall
carry into execution every power that is vested anywhere in the
Government.

The question may be asked, Why did not the Constitution say
so, then ? It did not say so because after having defined the
range of powers and their nature for every department of the
Government, commanded what should be done, it left, as all con-
stitutions in all civilized governments everywhere have done and
must do forever, to the law-making power from time to time to
carry all these great powers into effect by the regular measure
of legislative procedure. I can scarcely state that so well — I
am sure I cannot — as it is stated by the Supreme Court of the
United States itself more than sixty years ago, when, just as now,
and just as always in governments, there arise great disputes
touching the powers of government. This was a question of
State rights, of the right of the Supreme Court of the United
States to disregard and set aside the judgment of the supreme
court of the great State of Virginia; and when arguments similar
to those that I have been putting forward as what might be
suggested against this bill and about the language of the Consti-
tiition were made, the court answered them in this way: —

"The Constitution, unavoidably, deals in general language. It did
not suit the purposes of the people, in framing this great charter of
our liberties, to provide for minute specifications of its powers, or to
declare the means by which those powers should be carried into ex-
ecution —

Mark the words, Mr. President — (<or to declare the means by
which those powers should be carried into execution."

®It was foreseen that this would be a perilous and difficult, if not
impracticable task. The instrument was not intended to provide
merely for the exigencies of a few years, but was to endure through
a long lapse of ages, the events of which were locked up in the
inscrutable purposes of Providence. It could not be foreseen what
new changes and modifications of power might be indispensable to
effectuate the general objects of the charter; and restrictions and
specifications, which at the present might seem salutary, might, in
the end, prove the overthrow of the system itself. Hence, its powers
are expressed in general terms, leaving to the Legislature, from time
to time, to adopt its own means to effectuate legitimate objects, and

GEORGE P. EDMUNDS

to mold and model the exercise of its powers, as its own wisdom
and the public interests should require.* — Martin versus Hunter's
Lessee, i Wheaton 326.

If there is any one principle of constitutional law that is set-
tled as deep as the foundations of the Government itself, it is
that which I have just read. There is scarcely one, in fact I
only remember one provision of the Constitution of the United
States, that has been said to execute itself, and for which it was
not necessary or proper that there should not be the provisions
of legislation to carry it into effect and to regulate the methods
and manners by which results should be arrived at. I believe it
was said in the case of Prigg versus The Commonwealth of Penn-
sylvania, on the subject of fugitive slaves, that as the Constitution
recognized a slave as property and as the fugitive clause in the
Constitution gave the master the right to his property if it should
have escaped from him, that clause in the Constitution did exe-
cute itself, so far as the right of the master was concerned, to
recapture his property anywhere he could find it, if he could do
so without violence and without a breach of the peace. That
was put upon the ground that it was simply a recognition of
the right of property, just as at the common law, as under the
laws of most of the States, no doubt, a man would be entitled,
if he could do it without violence or a breach of the peace, to
recapture his children or his wife who were illegally detained
from him. But beyond that I say I know of no instance in
this wide variety of powers, legislative, executive, and judicial,
anywhere, where there is not the fit necessity for legislative
action to regulate and carry on the great objects of the exertion
of the powers that are not by implication, but expressly, vested
in some one of the departments of the Government; and even
in that case to which I have alluded, where the court said that
the Constitution did execute itself, they nevertheless held that
that also was the proper subject of legislative action of Con-
gress, and that Congress might regulate, as it had regulated,
the manner in which and the means by which the owner of the
slave should assert his right to his property. The President of
the United States, by the express language of the Constitution,
is the Commander-in-Chief of the armies and navies of the Re-
public; and yet from the beginning until now, without question
by anybody as to the constitutional propriety of such legislation,

1974

GEORGE F. EDMUNDS

the manner in which and the means by which he shall exercise
the power of Commander-in-Chief of the Army has been regu-
lated by law. The Constitution of the United States vests judi-
cial powers in one Supreme Court and in such inferior courts as
Congress from time to time may establish; and yet one of the
very first acts that the Congress under this Constitution ever
passed was an act that regulated and guided and controlled, from
top to bottom, the exercise of those powers that were clearly and
expressly delegated to the judicial branch; and no man ever sus-
pected that Congress was exceeding its power in providing by
law for the means and the ways of the performance of the great
judicial functions — which, least of all, it would be safe for a
republic to permit to be unduly meddled with.

So, Mr. President, it does appear to us, without my enlarging
upon this branch of the discussion, and for the very few reasons
that I have so feebly stated, that the idea that this bill can be
assailed as an unconstitutional measure, even if you say that the
Constitution has vested the power of performing the executive or
ministerial function of counting the votes which the Constitution
says the person having the greatest number of shall be Presi-
dent, is not at all maintainable. You have only done in this bill
what in respect to every other branch of the Government, and
for all time, year by year, you have been daily doing with the
acceptance of everybody. It only provides for ascertaining in a
regular and lawful way what is the subject upon which this exec-
utive function of counting the vote, finding out who has the high-
est number, rests. It might be contended with considerable force,
even if the duty, as far as I have heard it claimed for you, Mr.
President, rested in that chair, that we have only furnished you
the means of justly performing that duty; and that would be true
unless it should be contended that the Constitution had reposed
in you the functions of Congress and of the Judiciary to hear,
try, and determine all questions of law and fact once for all, as
in a given case whether you should be President of the United
States or not. If the pretension goes as far as that, of course
this bill is against it. But if it only goes to the point that you
are to exercise a commanded ministerial duty of counting a vote,
then upon the principles that I have stated it would be entirely
competent, and the absolute duty of Congress to provide you a
means of finding out what is the vote that you are to count, and
compelling you, as it does courts, presidents, everybody, to follow

GEORGE F. EDMUNDS

'975

the judgment of whatever tribunal should have ascertained that
fact for you, because it is only an act which you are to do, not a
decision that you are to render. . . .

So, then, Mr. President, it cannot be maintained that this bill
is unconstitutional upon the ground that it takes away from the
President of the Senate or the House of Representatives a power
which the Constitution has vested in them free from limit and free
from guide, and free from regulation, to be exercised according
to their own opinion of what may be the public propriety of the
occasion.

Having said so much, Mr. President, for the present, I dismiss
the subject, in the hope that the Senate will carefully consider
whether it is wise, by stimulating doubts in their own minds, or
by allowing their wishes to outrun their judgment, to send this
Republic on the first Thursday in February, or the second Wed-
nesday in that month, like the mountains that the poet has
spoken of that were —

(< Toppling evermore
Into seas without a shore,"

or whether it is better that in the fair course of equal law a dis-
pute shall be justly settled.

JONATHAN EDWARDS

(1703-1758)

|T is said that when Jonathan Edwards preached his sermon,
< Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,* the hearers
"groaned and shrieked convulsively," and that their out-
cries drowned the preacher's voice. At the climax of the discourse,
a brother clergyman, no longer able to restrain himself, cried out:
w Mr. Edwards, Mr. Edwards, is not God merciful, too ? *

That question has been asked ever since, by all readers of Ed-
wards's sermons. The last words the great painter of (< hell-torments *
ever uttered on earth were : <( Trust in God, and ye need not fear ! *
But this dying message to the world did not break the force of such
sermons as have made him one of the great revolutionary forces of
modern theology. The reaction against his ideas, which set in dur-
ing his life, became especially strong in New England, but perhaps
it never reached its climax until Mivart wrote his celebrated disquisi-
tion on ( Happiness in Hell.* Dante saw in justice and "primal love"
the necessity for a terrible punishment for those who wrong and op-
press the helpless. With the same thought and scarcely an inferior
eloquence, the great Puritan preacher depicts the horrors of the In-
ferno which it seemed to him was inevitable for all who stubbornly
invited retribution.

Jonathan Edwards was born at East Windsor, Connecticut, October
5th, 1703. His father was a minister of the Gospel, and it is said of his
mother that she was a philosopher and metaphysician without know-
ing it. From her and from John Locke, whose works he read when
a boy, Jonathan Edwards acquired the logical faculty which is so
strikingly apparent in his discourses. He graduated at Yale College
before he was seventeen years old, and soon afterwards began the
career as a preacher and teacher which immortalized him. The
work for which he is most celebrated was done in New England,
but in 1758 he became President of Princeton College, and died there
March 22d of the same year. One of his biographers says of him: —

<(As a preacher Edwards has been rarely, if ever, excelled since the days
of the Apostles. His manner was not oratorical, and his voice was feeble;
but this was of little account with so much directness and richness cf thought,
and such overwhelming power of argument, pressed home upon the conscience
and the heart In vain did any one attempt to escape from falling a prey under

JONATHAN EDWARDS ,(y;7

his mighty appeal. It was in the application of his subject that he specially
excelled. The part of the sermon before this was only preparatory. Here
was the stretching out of the arms of the discourse, to borrow a figure, upon
the hearts and lives of his audience. < It was a kind of moral inquisition ;
and sinners were put upon argumentative racks, and beneath screws, and,
with an awful revolution of the great truth in hand, evenly and steadily
screwed down and crushed. )W

ETERNITY OF HELL TORMENTS

(From a Sermon Preached from the Text, « These shall go away into
everlasting punishment,* Matthew xxv. 46)

BE ENTREATED to consider attentively how great and awful a
thing eternity is. Although you cannot comprehend it the
more by considering, yet you may be made more sensible
that it is not a thing to be disregarded. Do but consider what
it is to suffer extreme torment forever and ever; to suffer it day
and night, from one day to another, from one year to another,
from one age to another, from one thousand ages to another,
and so adding age to age and thousands to thousands, in pain,
in wailing and lamenting, groaning and shrieking, and gnashing
your teeth; with your souls full of dreadful grief and amazement,
with your bodies and every member full of racking torture, with-
out any possibility of getting ease; without any possibility of
moving God to pity by your cries; without any possibility of hid-
ing yourselves from him; without any possibility of diverting
your thoughts from your pain; without any possibility of obtain-
ing any manner of mitigation, or help, or change for the better
any way.

Do but consider how dreadful despair will be in such tor-
ment.. How dismal will it be, when you are under these racking
torments, to know assuredly that you never, never shall be deliv-
ered from them; to have no hope: when you shall wish that you
might be turned into nothing, but shall have no hope of it;
when you shall wish that you might be turned into a toad or a
serpent, but shall have no hope of it; when you would rejoice,
if you might but have any relief, after you shall have endured
these torments millions of ages, but shall have no hope of it;
when after you shall have worn out the age of the sun, moon,
and stars, in your dolorous groans and lamentations, without

I978 JONATHAN EDWARDS

any rest day or night, or one minute's ease, yet you shall have
no hope of ever being delivered; when after you shall have
worn out a thousand more such ages, yet you shall have no hope,
but shall know that you are not one whit nearer to the end of
your torments, but that still there are the same groans, the same
shrieks, the same doleful cries, incessantly to be made by you,
and that the smoke of your torment shall still ascend up forever
and ever, and that your souls, which shall have been agitated
with the wrath of God all this while, yet will still exist to bear
more wrath; your bodies, which shall have been roasting and
burning all this while in these glowing flames, yet shall not have
been consumed, but will remain to roast through an eternity yet,
which will not have been at all shortened by what shall have
been past.

You may, by considering, make yourselves more sensible than
you ordinarily are; but it is a little you can conceive of what it
is to have no hope in such torments.

How sinking would it be to you to endure such pain as you
have felt in this world without any hopes, and to know that you
never should be delivered from it, nor have one minute's rest!
You can now scarcely conceive how doleful that would be. How
much more to endure the vast weight of the wrath of God with-
out hope! The more the damned in hell think of the eternity
of their torments, the more amazing will it appear to them; and
alas! they are not able to avoid thinking of it, they will not be
able to keep it out of their minds. Their tortures will not
divert them from it, but will fix their attention to it. Oh, how
dreadful will eternity appear to them after they shall have been
thinking on it for ages together, and shall have had so long an
experience of their torments! The damned in hell will have
two infinites perpetually to amaze them and swallow them up ;
one is an infinite God, whose wrath they will bear, and in whom
they will behold their perfect and irreconcilable enemy. The
other is the infinite duration of their torment.

If it were possible for the damned in hell to have a compre-
hensive knowledge of eternity, their sorrow and grief would be
infinite in degree, The comprehensive view of so much sorrow
which they must endure would cause infinite grief for the pres-
ent. Though they will not have a comprehensive knowledge of
it, yet they will doubtless have a vastly more lively and strong

JONATHAN EDWARDS

apprehension of it than we can have in this world. Their tor-
ments will give them an impression of it. A man in his present
state, without any enlargement of his capacity, would have a
vastly more lively impression of eternity than he has if he were
only under some pretty sharp pain in some member of his body,
and were at the same time assured that he must endure that
pain forever. His pain would give him a greater sense of eter-
nity than other men have. How much more will those excruci-
ating torments which the damned will suffer have this effect!

Besides, their capacity will probably be enlarged, their under-
standings will be quicker and stronger in a future state; and
God can give them as great a sense and as strong an impression
of eternity as he pleases, to increase their grief and torment.

Oh, be entreated, ye that are in a Christless state and are go-
ing on in a way to hell, that are daily exposed to damnation, to
consider these things. If you do not, it will surely be but a
little while before you will experience them, and then you will
know how dreadful it is to despair in hell; and it may be before
this year or this month or this week is at an end; before another
Sabbath, or ever you shall have the opportunity to hear another
sermon.

WRATH UPON THE WICKED TO THE UTTERMOST
(From a Sermon on i Thessalonians ii. 16)

WHEN those that continue in sin shall have filled up the
measure of their sin, then wrath will come upon them to
the uttermost.

There is a certain measure that God hath set to the sin of
every wicked man. God says concerning the sin of man, as he
says to the raging waves of the sea, <( Hitherto shalt thou come,
and no further. * The measure of some is much greater than of
others. Some reprobates commit but a little sin in comparison
with others, and so are to endure proportionably a smaller
punishment. There are many vessels of wrath; but some are
smaller, and others greater vessels; some will contain compara-
tively but little wrath, others a greater measure of it. Some-
times, when we see men go to dreadful lengths, and become very
heinously wicked, we are ready to wonder that God lets them

I980 JONATHAN EDWARDS

alone. He sees them go on in such audacious wickedness, and
keeps silence, nor does anything to interrupt them, but they go
smoothly on, and meet with no hurt. But sometimes the reason
why God lets them alone is, because they have not filled up the
measure of their sins. When they live in dreadful wickedness,
they are but filling up the measure which God hath limited for
them. This is sometimes the reason why God suffers very wicked
men to live so long; because their iniquity is not full. (< The
iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full." For this reason, also,
God sometimes suffers them to live in prosperity. Their pros-
perity is a snare to them, and an occasion of their sinning a great
deal more. Wherefore God suffers them to have such a snare,
because he suffers them to fill up a larger measure. So, for this
cause, he sometimes suffers them to live under great light, and
great means and advantages, at the same time to neglect and
misimprove all. Every one shall live till he hath filled up his
measure.

While men continue in sin, they are filling the measure set
them. This is the work in which they spend their whole lives;
they begin in their childhood; and, if they live to grow old in
sin, they still go on with this work. It is the work with which
every day is filled up. They may alter their business in other
respects; they may sometimes be about one thing, and sometimes
about another; but they never change from this work of filling
up the measure of their sins. Whatever they put their hands to,
they are still employed in this work. This is the first thing that
they set themselves about when they awake in the morning, and
the last thing they do at night. They are all the while treasur-
ing up wrath against the day of wrath, and the revelation of the
righteous judgment of God. It is a gross mistake of some nat-
ural men, who think that when they read and pray they do not
add to their sins, but, on the contrary, think they diminish their
guilt by these exercises. They think that, instead of adding to
their sins, they do something to satisfy for their past offenses;
but, instead of that, they do but add to the measure by their
best prayers, and by those services with which they themselves
are most pleased.

When once the measure of their sins is filled up, then wrath
will come upon them to the uttermost. God will then wait no
longer upon them. Wicked men think that God is altogether

JONATHAN EDWARDS ,gg(

such an one as themselves, because, when they commit such
wickedness, he keeps silence. " Because judgment against an
evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the
children of men is fully set in them to do evil.* But when once
they shall have filled up the measure of their sins, judgment will
be executed; God will not bear with them any longer. Now is
the day of grace, and the day of patience, which they spend in
filling up their sins; but when their sins shall be full, then will
come the day of wrath, the day of the fierce anger of God.
God often executes his wrath on ungodly men in a less degree,
in this world. He sometimes brings afflictions upon them, and
that in wrath. Sometimes he expresses his wrath in very sore
judgments; sometimes he appears in a terrible manner, not only
outwardly, but also in the inward expressions of it on their con-
sciences. Some, before they died, have had the wrath of God in-
flicted on their souls in degrees that have been intolerable. But
these things are only forerunners of their punishment, only slight
foretastes of wrath. God never stirs up all his wrath against
wicked men while in this world ; but when once wicked . men
shall have filled up the measure of their sins, then wrath will
come upon them to the uttermost; and that in the following re-
spects.

Wrath will come upon them without any restraint or modera-
tion in the degree of it. God doth always lay, as it were, a re-
straint upon himself; he doth not stir up his wrath; he stays his
rough wind in the day of his east wind; he lets not his arm
light down on wicked men with its full weight. But when sin-
ners shall have filled up the measure of their sins, there will be
no caution, no restraint. His rough wind will not be stayed nor
moderated. The wrath of God will be poured out like fire. He
will come forth, not only in anger, but in the fierceness of his
anger; he will execute wrath with power, so as to show what his
wrath is, and make his power known. There will be nothing to
alleviate his wrath; his heavy wrath will lie on them, without
anything to lighten the burthen, or to keep off, in any measure,
the full weight of it from pressing the soul. His eye will not
spare, neither will he regard the sinner's cries and lamentations,
however loud and bitter. Then shall wicked men know that God
is the Lord; they shall know how great that majesty is which they
have despised, and how dreadful that threatened wrath is which

I982 JONATHAN EDWARDS

they have so little regarded. Then shall come on wicked men
that punishment which they deserve. God will exact of them
the uttermost farthing. Their iniquities are marked before him;
they are all written in his book; and in the future world he will
reckon with them, and they must pay all the debt. Their sins
are laid up in store with God; they are sealed up among his
treasures; and them he will recompense, even recompense into
their bosoms. The consummate degree of punishment will not
be executed till the day of judgment; but the wicked are sealed
over to this consummate punishment immediately after death;
they are cast into hell, and there bound in chains of darkness to
the judgment of the great day, and they know that the highest
degree of punishment is coming upon them.

SINNERS IN THE HANDS OF AN ANGRY GOD

(From a Sermon on Deuteronomy xxxii. 35, Preached at Enfield, Connecticut,

July 8th, 1741)

THE God that holds you over the pit of hell much as one holds
a spider or some loathsome insect over the fire abhors you,
and is dreadfully provoked; his wrath towards you burns like
fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else but to be cast
into the fire; he is of purer eyes than to bear you in his sight;
you are ten thousand times as abominable in his eyes as the most
hateful and venomous serpent is in ours. You have offended him
infinitely more than ever a stubborn rebel did his prince, and
yet it is nothing but his hand that holds you from falling into
the fire every moment; it is abscribed to nothing else that you
did not go to hell the last night that you were suffered to awake
again in this world, after you closed your eyes to sleep; and there
is no other reason to be given why you have not dropped into
hell since you arose in the morning, but that God's hand has held
you up; there is no other reason to be given why you have not
gone to hell, since you have sat here in the house of God provok-
ing his pure eye by your sinful, wicked manner of attending his
solemn worship; yea, there is nothing else that is to be given as
a reason why you do not this very moment drop down into hell.
O sinner! consider the fearful danger you are in; it is a great
furnace of wrath, a wide and bottomless pit, full of the fire of

JONATHAN EDWARDS ,983

wrath that you are held over in the hands of that God whose
wrath is provoked and incensed as much against you as against
many of the damned in hell; you hang by a slender thread, with
the flames of Divine wrath flashing about it, and ready every mo-
ment to singe it and burn it asunder, and you have no interest
in any mediator, and nothing to lay hold of to save yourself,
nothing to keep off the flames of wrath, nothing of your own,
nothing that you have ever done, nothing that you can do to in-
duce God to spare you one moment. . . .

It would be dreadful to suffer this fierceness and wrath of
Almighty God one moment; but you must suffer it to all eter-
nity: there will be no end to this exquisite, horrible misery:
when you look forward, you shall see along forever a boundless
duration before you, which will swallow up your thoughts, and
amaze your soul; and you will absolutely despair of ever having
any deliverance, any end, any mitigation, any rest at all; you
will know certainly that you must wear out long ages, millions of
millions of ages in wrestling and conflicting with this Almighty,
merciless vengeance; and then when you have so done, when so
many ages have actually been spent by you in this manner, you
will know that all is but a point to what remains, so that your
punishment will indeed be infinite. Oh! who can express what
the state of a soul in such circumstances is! All that we can
possibly say about it gives but a very feeble, faint representa-
tion of it; it is inexpressible and inconceivable: for *who knows
the power of God's anger ! *

How dreadful is the state of those that are daily and hourly
in danger of this great wrath and infinite misery! But this is
the dismal case of every soul in this congregation that has not
been born again, however moral and strict, sober and religious
they may otherwise be. Oh ! that you would consider it, whether
you be young or old! There is reason to think that there are
many in this congregation now hearing this discourse, that will
actually be the subjects of this very misery to all eternity. We
know not who they are, or in what seats they sit, or what
thoughts they now have — it may be they are now at ease, and
hear all these things without much disturbance, and are now
flattering themselves that they are not the persons, promising
themselves that they shall escape. If we knew that there was
one person, and but one, in the whole congregation, that was to

JONATHAN EDWARDS

be the subject of this misery, what an awful thing it would be
to think of! If we knew who it was, what an awful sight it
would be to see such a person! How might all the rest of the
congregation lift up a lamentable and bitter cry over him! But,
alas! instead of one, how many is it likely will remember this
discourse in hell! And it would be a wonder, if some that are
now present should not be in hell in a very short time, before
this year is out. And it would be no wonder if some persons
that now sit here in some seats of this meetinghouse, in health,
and quiet and secure, should be there before to-morrow morning'.

1985

SIR JOHN ELIOT
(1592-1632)

IHE Petition of Right* adopted by the English Parliament in
1628 is one of the great landmarks of modern history. It
declared the sovereignty of the people represented in Par-
liament as against the King, and as a logical result of it, Charles I.,
resisting popular supremacy, was impeached for treason, and exe-
cuted. The fundamental question involved in the * Petition of Right '
is that of the right of the producer to own and control his product.
In adopting the bill, Parliament declared that wno freeman shall be
required to give any gift, loan, benevolence, or tax, without common
consent, by act of Parliament.* Other declarations of the Petition
were that (<no freeman be imprisoned or detained contrary to the
law of the land;* that soldiers or mariners be not billeted on private
houses ; and that <( commissions to punish soldiers and sailors by mar-
tial law be revoked and no more issued.*

Sir John Eliot, one of the most eloquent men of his day, gave his
full power to the support of the Petition, which was drawn by
the celebrated Coke. Born April 2oth, 1592, Eliot, after graduating
at Oxford and studying law in London, entered Parliament in 1625.
He became one of the leaders of an Opposition which boasts such
great names as Coke, Pym, and Hampden. In 1626, in company with
Sir Dudley Digges, he was seized by Charles I. and hurried to the
Tower, but Parliament asserted its prerogative with such vigor that
the King was compelled to surrender his prisoners. The < Petition
of Right, > adopted in the third Parliament under Charles I., though
drawn in the form of a petition to the throne, was really so bold an
assertion of popular rights that Eliot's share in it was never for-
given. On the dissolution of Parliament in 1629, he was arrested,
sentenced to pay a fine of ,£2,000 and to remain in prison until he
should acknowledge himself guilty of conspiracy against the King.
He died in the Tower, November zjth, 1632. Goodrich compares
Eliot's style to that of Demosthenes. It is severe in expression but
admirable in its directness, with a cumulative force that is seen only
in the speeches of men of great intellect,
v— 125

SIR JOHN ELIOT

ON THE PETITION OF RIGHT
(Delivered in the House of Commons, June sd, 1628)

Mr. Speaker: —

WE SIT here as the great Council of the King, and in that
company it is our duty to take into consideration the
state and affairs of the kingdom, and, when there is occa-
sion, to give a true representation of them by way of counsel
and advice, with what we conceive necessary or expedient to be
done.

In this consideration I confess many a sad thought hath
affrighted me, and that not only in respect of our dangers from
abroad (which yet I know are great, as they have been often
pressed and dilated to us), but in respect of our disorders here
at home, which do enforce those dangers and by which they
are occasioned. For I believe I shall make it clear to you
that both at- first the cause of these dangers were our disorders,
and our disorders now are yet our greatest dangers; that not so
much the potency of our enemies as the weakness of ourselves
doth threaten us; so that the saying of one of the Fathers may
be presumed by us, <( Non tarn potentia sua quam negligentia nos-
tra* (Not so much by our power as by our neglect). Our want
of true devotion to Heaven; our insincerity and doubting in reli-
gion; our want of councils; our precipitate actions; the insuffi-
ciency or unfaithfulness of our generals abroad; the ignorance or
corruption of our ministers at home; the impoverishing of the
sovereign; the oppression and depression of the subject; the ex-
hausting of our treasures; the waste of our provisions; consump-
tion of our ships; destruction of our men; — these make the
advantage to our enemies, not the reputation of their arms; and
if in these there be not reformation, we need no foes abroad;
time itself will ruin us.

To show this more fully, I believe you will all hold it neces-
sary that what I say should not seem an aspersion on the state
or imputation on the government, as I have known such motions
misinterpreted. But far is this from me to propose, who have
none but clear thoughts of the excellency of the King; nor can
I have other ends but the advancement of his Majesty's glory.
I shall desire a little of your patience extraordinary, as I lay

SIR JOHN ELIOT ,987

open the particulars, which I shall do with what brevity I may,
answerable to the importance of the cause and the necessity now
upon us; yet with such respect and observation to the time, as I
hope it shall not be thought troublesome.

1. For the first, then, our insincerity and doubting in religion
is the greatest and most dangerous disorder of all others. This
hath never been unpunished; and of this we have many strong
examples of all states and in all times to awe us. What testi-
mony doth it want ? Will you have authority of books ? Look
on the collections of the Committee for Religion; there is too
clear an evidence. See there the commission procured for com-
position with the Papists of the North! Mark the proceedings
thereupon, and you will find them to little less amounting than
a toleration in effect; the slight payments, and the easiness of
them, will likewise show the favor that is intended. Will you
have proofs of men ? Witness the hopes, witness the presump-
tions, witness the reports of all the papists generally. Observe
the dispositions of commanders, the trust .of officers, the confi-
dence in secretaries to employments in this kingdom, in Ireland,
and elsewhere. These will all show that it hath too great a cer-
tainty. And to this add but the incontrovertible evidence of
that All-Powerful Hand, which we have felt so sorely, that gave
it full assurance; for as the heavens oppose themselves to our
impiety, so it is we that first opposed the heavens.

2. For the second, our want of councils, that great disorder in
a state under which there cannot be stability. If effects may
show their causes (as they are often a perfect demonstration of
them), our misfortunes, our disasters, serve to prove our deficien-
cies in council, and the consequences they draw with them. If
reason be allowed in this dark age, the judgment of dependen-
cies and foresight of contingencies in affairs do confirm my posi-
tion. For, if we view ourselves at home, are we in strength, are
we in reputation, equal to our ancestors? If we view ourselves
abroad, are our friends as many ? Are our enemies no more ?
Do our friends retain their safety and possessions? Do not our
enemies enlarge themselves, and gain from them and us? To
what council owe we the loss of the Palatinate where we sacri-
ficed both our honor and our men sent thither, stopping those
greater powers appointed for the service, by which it might have
been defended ? What council gave direction to the late action,
whose wounds are yet bleeding ? I mean the expedition to

I988 SIR JOHN ELIOT

Rlie", of which there is yet so sad a memory in all men. What
design for us or advantage to our state could that impart ?

You know the wisdom of your ancestors, and the practice of
their times, how they preserved their safeties. We all know, and
have as much cause to doubt (i. e., distrust or guard against) as
they had, the greatness and ambition of that kingdom, which the
Old World could not satisfy. Against this greatness and ambi-
tion we likewise know the proceedings of that princess, that
never-to-be-forgotten, excellent Queen Elizabeth, whose name,
without admiration, falls not into mention even with her ene-
mies. You know how she advanced herself, and how she ad-
vanced the nation in glory and in state; how she depressed her
enemies, and how she upheld her friends; how she enjoyed a
full security, and made those our scorn who now are made our
terror.

Some of the principles she built on were these, and if I mis-
take, let reason and our statesmen contradict me: —

First, to maintain, in what she might, a unity in France, that
the kingdom, being at peace within itself, might be a bulwark
to keep back the power of Spain by land.

Next, to preserve an amity and league between that State and
us, that so we might come in aid of the Low Countries (Holland),
and by that means receive their ships, and help them by sea.

This triple cord, so working between France, the States (Hol-
land), and England, might enable us, as occasion should require,
to give assistance unto others. And by this means, as the ex-
perience of that time doth tell us, we were not only free from
those fears that now possess and trouble us, but then our names
were fearful to our enemies. See now what correspondency our
action had with this. Try our conduct by these rules. It did
induce, as a necessary consequence, a division in France between
Protestants and their king, of which there is too woeful and
lamentable experience. It hath made an absolute breach be-
tween that State and us, and so entertains us against France,
and France in preparation against us, that we have nothing to
promise to our neighbors, nay, hardly to ourselves. Next, ob-
serve the time in which it was attempted, and you shall find it
not only varying from those principles, but directly contrary and
opposite to those ends; and such, as from the issue and success,
rather might be thought a conception of Spain than begotten
here with us.

SIR JOHN ELIOT ,989

You know the dangers of Denmark, and how much they con-
cern us; what in respect of our alliance and the country; what
in the importance of the sound; what an advantage to our ene-
mies the gain thereof would be! What loss, what prejudice to
us by this disunion; we breaking in upon France, France en-
raged by us, and the Netherlands at amazement between both!
Neither could we intend to aid that luckless King (Christian IV.,
of Denmark), whose loss is our disaster.

Can those (the King's ministers) that express their trouble at
the hearing of these things, and have so often told us in this
place of their knowledge in the conjunctures and disjunctures of
affairs — can they say they advised in this ? Was this an act
of council, Mr. Speaker ? I have more charity than to think
it; and, unless they make confession of it themselves, I cannot
believe it.

3. For the next, the insufficiency and unfaithfulness of our
generals (that great disorder abroad), what shall I say ? I wish
there were not cause to mention it; and but for the apprehension
of the danger that is to come, if the like choice hereafter be not
prevented, I could willingly be silent. But my duty to my sov-
ereign, my service to this House, and the safety and honor of
my country, are above all respects; and what so nearly trenches
to the prejudice of these, must not, shall not be forborne.

At Cadiz, when in that first expedition we made, when we ar-
rived and found a conquest ready, — the Spanish ships I mean, —
fit for the satisfaction of a voyage, and of which some of the
chiefest then there themselves have since assured me that the
satisfaction would have been sufficient, either in point of honor,
or in point of profit — why was it neglected ? Why was it not
achieved, it being granted on all hands how feasible it was?

Afterwards when, with the destruction of some of our men
and the exposure of others, who (though their fortune since has
not been such), by chance, came off safe — when, I say, with the
loss of our serviceable men, that unserviceable fort was gained,
and the whole army landed, why was there nothing done ? Why
was there nothing attempted ? If nothing was intended, where-
fore did they land ? If there was a service, wherefore were they
shipped again? Mr. Speaker, it satisfies me too much (*. e., I
am over-satisfied) in this case — when I think of their dry and
hungry march into that drunken quarter (for so the soldiers
termed it) which was the period of their journey — that divers

I99o SIR JOHN ELIOT

of our men being left as a sacrifice to the enemy, that labor
was at end.

For the next undertaking at Rh6, I will not trouble you with
much, only this in short. Was not that whole action carried
against the judgment and opinion of those officers that were of
the council ? Was not the first, was not the last, was not all in
the landing, in the intrenching, in the continuance there, in the
assault, in the retreat, without their assent ? Did any advice take
place of such as were of the council ? If there should be made
a particular inquisition thereof, these things will be manifest and
more. I will not instance the manifest that was made, giving
the reason of these arms; nor by whom, nor in what manner,
nor on what grounds it was published, nor what effects it hath
wrought, drawing, as it were, almost the whole world into
league against us. Nor will I mention the leaving of the wines,
the leaving of the salt, which were in our possession, and of a
value, as it is said, to answer much of our expense. Nor will I
dwell on that great wonder (which no Alexander or Csesar ever
did), the enriching of the enemy by courtesies when our soldiers
wanted help; nor the private intercourse and parleys with the
fort, which were continually held. What they intended may be
read in the success; and upon due examination thereof, they
would not want their proofs.

For the last voyage to Rochelle, there need be no observa-
tions; it is so fresh in memory; nor will I make an inference or
corollary on all. Your own knowledge shall judge what truth or
what sufficiency they express.

4. For the next, the ignorance and corruption of our min-
isters, where can you miss of instances? If you survey .the
court, if you survey the country; if the Church, if the city be
examined; if you observe the bar, if the bench, if the ports, if
the shipping, if the land, if the seas, — all these will render you
variety of proofs, and that in such measure and proportion as
shows the greatness of our disease to be such that if there be
not some speedy application for remedy, our case is almost des-
perate.

5. Mr. Speaker, I fear I have been too long in these particu-
lars that are past, and am unwilling to offend you; therefore in
the rest I shall be shorter; and as to that which concerns the
impoverishing of the King, no other arguments will I use than
such as all men grant.

SIR JOHN ELIOT

The exchequer, you know, is empty, and the reputation thereof
gone; the ancient lands are sold; the jewels pawned; the plate
engaged; the debt still great; almost all charges, both ordinary
and extraordinary, borne up by projects! What poverty can be
greater? What necessity so great ? What perfect English heart
is not almost dissolved into sorrow for this truth ?

6. For the oppression of the subject, which, as I remember, is
the next particular I proposed, it needs no demonstration. The
whole kingdom is a proof; and, for the exhausting of our treas-
ures, that very oppression speaks it. What waste of our provi-
sions, what consumption of our ships, what destruction of our men
there hath been? Witness that expedition to Algiers; witness
that with Mansfeldt; witness that to Cadiz; witness the next —
witness that to Rh6; witness the last (I pray God we may never
have more such witnesses !) — witness, likewise, the Palatinate ; wit-
ness Denmark, witness the Turks, witness the Dunkirkers, witness
all! What losses we have sustained! How we are impaired in
munitions, in ships, in men!

It is beyond contradiction that we were never so weakened,
nor ever had less hope how to be restored.

These, Mr. Speaker, are our dangers, these are they who do
threaten us, and these are, like the Trojan horse, brought in cun-
ningly to surprise us. In these do lurk the strongest of our
enemies, ready to issue on us; and if we do not speedily expel
them, these are the signs, these are the invitations to others!
These will so prepare their entrance that we shall have no means
left of refuge or defense; for if we have these enemies at
home, how can we strive with those that are abroad ? If we be
free from these, no other can impeach us. Our ancient English
virtue (like the old Spartan valor) cleared from these disorders —
our being in sincerity of religion and once made friends with
heaven; having maturity of councils, sufficiency of generals, in-
corruption of officers, opulency in the King, liberty in the people,
repletion in treasure, plenty of provisions, reparation of ships,
preservation of men — our ancient English virtue, I say, thus rec-
tified, will secure us; and unless there be a speedy reformation
in these, I know not what hopes or expectations we can have.

These are the things, sir, I shall desire to have taken into
consideration; that as we are the great council of the kingdom,
and have the apprehension of these dangers, we may truly repre-
sent them unto the King, which I conceive we are bound to do

SIR JOHN ELIOT

by a triple obligation — of duty to God, of duty to his Majesty,
and of duty to our country.

And therefore I wish it may so stand with the wisdom and
judgment of the House that these things may be drawn into
the body of remonstrance, and in all humility expressed, with a
prayer to his Majesty that, for the safety of himself, for the
safety of the kingdom, and for the safety, of religion, he will be
pleased to give us time to make perfect inquisition thereof, or to
take them into his own wisdom, and there give them such timely
reformation as the necessity and justice of the case doth import.

And thus, sir, with a large affection and loyalty to his Maj-
esty, and with a firm duty and service to my country, I have
suddenly (and it may be with some disorder) expressed the weak
apprehensions I have; wherein if I have erred, I humbly crave
your pardon, and so submit myself to the censure of the House.

^993

OLIVER ELLSWORTH
(1745-1807)

[LIVER ELLSWORTH, Chief-Justice of the United States during
the administration of John Adams, was an orator of excep-
tional power. It is said that though his imagination was
cold and colorless, his eloquence was nevertheless irresistible — a re-
sult due, no doubt, to such masterly handling of facts as is illustrated
in his address to the Connecticut State Convention, when the ques-
tion of coercing the States was under consideration. No one else,
perhaps, has presented the logic of coercion so forcibly — certainly
not Hamilton, who is much less direct. Ellsworth shows a strength
of conviction on this point, which it is necessary to understand be-
fore it is possible to understand the forces which made American
history from 1850 to 1870. His address on Coercion is one of the
most important historical documents in American archives.

He was born at Windsor, Connecticut, - April 29th, 1745. From
1789 to 1796 he was United States Senator for Connecticut. In 1796
he left the Senate to become Chief-Justice of the United States. In
1799 he went as envoy to France, and, during his absence, resigned
as Chief-Justice. Returning to America he served as a member of
the State Council of Connecticut from 1802 to 1807, dying November
26th, 1807.

UNION AND COERCION

(Delivered at the Opening of the Debates on the Federal Constitution, in the
Convention of the State of Connecticut, January 4th, 1788)

Mr. President: —

IT is observable that there is no preface to the proposed Con-
stitution; but it evidently presupposes two things: one is, the
necessity of a federal government; the other is the ineffi-
ciency of the old Articles of Confederation. A union is necessary
for the purposes of a national defense. United, we are strong;
divided, we are weak. It is easy for hostile nations to sweep off
a number of separate States one after another. Witness the
States in the neighborhood of ancient Rome. They were sue-

OLIVER ELLSWORTH

cessively subdued by that ambitious city, which they might have
conquered with the utmost ease, if they had been united.

Witness the Canaanitish nations whose divided situation ren-
dered them an easy prey. Witness England, which, when divided
into separate States, was twice conquered by an inferior force.
Thus it always happens to small States, and to great ones, if
divided. Or if, to avoid this, they connect themselves with some
powerful State, their situation is not much better. This shows us
the necessity of combining our whole force, and, as to national
purposes, becoming one State.

A union, sir, is likewise necessary, considered with relation to
economy. Small States have enemies, as well as great ones.
They must provide for their defense. The expense of it, which
would be moderate for a large kingdom, would be intolerable to
a petty State. The Dutch are wealthy; but they are one of the
smallest of the European nations, and their taxes are higher than
in any other country of Europe. The taxes amount to forty shil-
lings per head, when those of England do not exceed half that
sum.

We must unite in order to preserve peace among ourselves.
If we be divided, what is to prevent wars from breaking out
among the States ? States, as well as individuals, are subject to
ambition, to avarice, to those jarring passions which disturb the
peace of society. What is to check these ? If there be a paren-
tal hand over the whole, this, and nothing else, can restrain the
unruly conduct of members.

Union is necessary to preserve commutative justice between
the States. If divided, what is to prevent the large States from
oppressing the small? What is to defend us from the ambition
and rapacity of New York, when she has spread over that vast
territory which she claims and holds ? Do we not already see in
her the seeds of an overbearing ambition ? On our other side,
there is a large and powerful State. Have we not already begun
to be tributaries ? If we do not improve the present critical
time, — if we do not unite, — shall we not be like Issachar of old,
a strong ass crouching down between two burdens ? New Jersey
and Delaware have seen this, and have adopted the Constitution
unanimously.

A more energetic system is necessary. The present is merely
advisory. It has no coercive power. Without this, government
is ineffectual, or rather is no government at all. But it is said;

OLIVER ELLSWORTH

w Such a power is not necessary. States will not do wrong.
They need only to be told their duty, and they will do it.w I
ask, sir, what warrant is there for this assertion ? Do not States
do wrong ? Whence come wars ? One of two hostile nations
must be in the wrong. But, it is said: " Among sister States, this
can never be presumed. }> But do we not know that, when friends
become enemies, their enmity is the most virulent ? The seven-
teen provinces of the Netherlands were once confederated; they
fought under the same banner. Antwerp, hard pressed by Philip,
applied to the other States for relief. Holland, a rival in trade,
opposed and prevented for the needy, succors. Antwerp was
made a sacrifice. I wish I could say there were no seeds of
similar injustice springing up among us. Is there not in one of
our States injustice too barefaced for Eastern despotism ? That
State is small; it does little hurt to any but itself. But it has a
spirit which would make a Tophet of the universe. But some
will say: (<We formerly did well without any union." I answer,
Our situation is materially changed. While Great Britain held
her authority, she awed us. She appointed governors and coun-
cils for the American provinces. She had a negative upon our
laws. But now our circumstances are so altered that there is no
arguing what we shall be from what we have been.

It is said that other confederacies have not had the principle
of. coercion. Is this so ? Let us attend to those confederacies
which have resembled our own. Some time before Alexander, the
Grecian States confederated together. The Amphictyonic Council,
consisting of deputies from these States, met at Delphos, and had
authority to regulate the general interests of Greece. This coun-
cil did enforce its decrees by coercion. The Boeotians once in-
fringed upon a decree of the Amphictyons. A mulct was laid
upon them. They refused to pay it. Upon that, their whole ter-
ritory was confiscated. They were then glad to compound the
matter. After the death of Alexander, the Achaean League was
formed. The decrees of this confederacy were enforced by dint
of arms. The JEtolian League was formed by some other Grecian
cities, in opposition to the Achaean; and there was no peace be-
tween them until they were conquered and reduced to a Roman
province. They were then obliged to sit down in peace under
the same yoke of despotism.

How is it with respect to the principle of coercion in the
Germanic body ? In Germany there are about three hundred

1996

OLIVER ELLSWORTH

principalities and republics. Deputies from these meet annually
in the general Diet, to make regulations for the empire. But
the execution of these is not left voluntarily with the members.
The empire is divided into ten circles, over each of which a
superintendent is appointed, with the rank of a major-general.
It is his duty to execute the decrees of the empire with a mili-
tary force.

The Confederation of the Swiss Cantons has been considered
as an example. But their circumstances are far different from
ours. They are small republics about twenty miles square, situ-
ated among the Alps, and inaccessible to hostile attacks. They
have nothing to tempt an invasion. Till lately, they had neither
commerce nor manufactures. They were merely a set of herds-
men. Their inaccessibleness has availed them. Four hundred of
those mountaineers defeated fifteen thousand Austrians, who were
marching to subdue them. They spend the ardor of youth in
foreign service; they return old, and disposed for tranquillity.
Between some of the cantons and France, there has long sub-
sisted a defensive treaty. By this treaty, France is to be a me-
diator to settle differences between the cantons. If any one be
obstinate, France is to compel a submission to reasonable terms.

The Dutch Republic is an example that merits attention. The
form of their Constitution, as it is on paper, admits not of coer-
cion. But necessity has introduced it in practice. This coercive
power is the influence of the stadtholder, an officer originally
unknown to their Constitution. But they have been necessitated
to appoint him, in order to set their unwieldy machine of gov-
ernment in motion. He is commander-in-chief of their navy
and of their army, consisting of forty or fifty regiments. He
appoints the officers of the land and naval forces. He presides
in the States-General and in the States of every province; and,
by means of this, he has a great opportunity to influence the
elections and decisions. The province of Holland has ever been
opposed to the appointment of a stadtholder, because by its
wealth and power, being equal to all the other provinces, it pos-
sesses the weight and influence of the stadtholder, when that office
is vacant. Without such an influence, their machine of govern-
ment would no more move than a ship without a wind, or a
clock without weights.

But to come nearer home. Mr. President, have we not seen
and felt the necessity of such a coercive power ? What was the

OLIVER ELLSWORTH

1997

consequence of the want of it during the late war, particularly
towards the close ? A few States bore the burden of the war.
While we and one or two more of the States were paying eighty
or a hundred dollars per man to recruit the Continental Army,
the regiments of some States had scarcely men enough to wait
on their officers. Since the close of the war, some of the States
have done nothing towards complying with the requisitions of
Congress. Others, who did something at first, seeing that they
were left to bear the whole burden, have become equally remiss.
What is the consequence ? To what shifts have we been driven ?
To the wretched expedient of negotiating new loans in Europe,
to pay the interest of the foreign debts. And what is still worse,
we have been obliged to apply the new loans to the support of
our own civil Government at home.

Another ill consequence of this want of energy is that treaties
are not performed. The treaty of peace with Great Britain was
a very favorable one for us. But it did not happen perfectly to
please some of the States, and they would not comply with it.
The consequence is, Britain charges us with the breach, and re-
fuses to deliver up the forts on our northern quarter.

Our being tributaries to our sister States is in consequence
of the want of a federal system. The State of New York raises
sixty thousand or eighty thousand pounds a year by impost.
Connecticut consumes about one-third of the goods upon which
this impost is laid, and consequently pays one-third of this sum
to New York. If we import by the medium of Massachusetts,
she has an impost, and to her we pay a tribute. If this is done
when we have the shadow of a national government, what shall
we not suffer when even that shadow is gone ?

If we go on as we have done, what is to become of the for-
eign debt ? Will sovereign nations forgive us this debt, because
we neglect to pay? or will they levy it by reprisals, as the laws
of nations authorize them ? Will our weakness induce Spain to
relinquish the exclusive navigation of the Mississippi or the ter-
ritory which she claims on the east side of that river ? Will our
weakness induce the British to give up the northern posts? If
a war break out, and our situation invite our enemies to make
war, how are we to defend ourselves? Has Government the
means to enlist a man or to buy an ox? Or shall we rally the
remainder of our old army ? The European nations I believe to
be not friendly to us. They were pleased to see us disconnected

1998

OLIVER ELLSWORTH

from Great Britain; they are pleased to see us disunited among
ourselves. If we continue so, how easy is it for them to canton
us out among them, as they did the kingdom of Poland! But
supposing this is- not done, if we suffer the Union to expire,
the least that may be expected is that the European powers will
form alliances, some with one State and some with another, and
play the States off one against another, and that we shall be in-
volved in all the labyrinths of European politics. But I do not
wish to continue the painful recital; enough has been said to
show that a power in the General Government to enforce the de-
crees of the Union is absolutely necessary.

The Constitution before us is a complete system of legisla-
tive, judicial, and executive power. It was designed to supply
the defects of the former system; and I believe, upon a full dis-
cussion, it will be found calculated to answer the purposes for
which it was designed.

1999

RALPH WALDO EMERSON
(1803-1882)

[HE profoundest thinker of the America of his day, Ralph
Waldo Emerson is, by that right, one of its greatest ora-
tors. It is doubtful if any one else has spoken in America,
in whose sentences ideas crowd each other as they do in his. His
training as an orator preceded the practice which made him a great
essayist; and though, for the most part, he gave up professional pub-
lic speaking on leaving the pulpit, his addresses and lectures express
his lofty genius better, perhaps, than it is expressed in any equal
number of his essays. He is a genuine poet, as well as an orator
and essayist, but his eloquence is that of the great thinker rather
than of the great poet. He does not amplify under the influence of
his ear for melody. His address on the death of Lincoln is a model
of brevity as it is of condensed and compacted truthfulness. In-
stead of putting Lincoln in w apotheosis,8 he humanizes him. The
Lincoln of Beecher and of Phillips Brooks might have come from
Utopia. Emerson's Lincoln certainly came from Illinois, and Emerson
demonstrates him a greater man than any Utopia has yet produced.

Born in Boston, May 25th, 1803, Emerson graduated at Harvard
in 1821, and from 1827 to 1832 filled the pulpit of a Unitarian Church
in Boston. In 1833 he began lecturing and producing the works
which immortalized him. He has been charged with having a defec-
tive ear as a poet, but if so, the defect is in his sense of metre,
rather than of melody. His oratory, though completely dominated
by idea, is always melodious in tone, and it is not necessarily to its
discredit that it will not break up into blank verse. Emerson died
at Concord, April 27th, 1882. His was the greatest mind of New
England. The world has produced few greater.

THE GREATNESS OF A PLAIN AMERICAN

(Delivered at Concord, Massachusetts, on the Occasion of the Funeral Services
in Honor of Mr. Lincoln, 1865)

WE MEET under the gloom of a calamity which darkens down
over the minds of good men in all civilized society, as
the fearful tidings travel over sea, over land, from coun-
try to country, like the shadow of an uncalculated eclipse over

2000 RALPH WALDO EMERSON

the planet. Old as history is, and manifold as are its tragedies,
I doubt if any death has caused so much pain to mankind as
this has caused, or will cause, on its announcement; and this
not so much because nations are by modern arts brought so
closely together, as because of the mysterious hopes and fears
which, in the present day, are connected with the name and
institutions of America. In this country, on Saturday, every one
was struck dumb, and saw, at first, only deep below deep, as he
meditated on the ghastly blow. And, perhaps, at this hour,
when the coffin which contains the dust of the President sets
forward on its long march through mourning States, on its way
to his home in Illinois, we might well be silent, and suffer the
awful voices of the time to thunder to us. Yes, but that first
despair was brief; the man was not so to be mourned. He was
the most active and hopeful of men, and his work had not per-
ished, but acclamations of praise for the task he had accom-
plished burst out into a song of triumph, which even tears for
his death cannot keep down. The President stood before us a
man of the people. He was thoroughly American, had never
crossed the sea, had never been spoiled by English insularity or
French dissipation; a quiet, native, aboriginal man, as an acorn
from the oak; no aping of foreigners, no frivolous accomplish-
ments; Kentuckian born, working on a farm, a flatboatman, a
captain in the Blackhawk War, a country lawyer, a representa-
tive in the rural legislature of Illinois — on such modest founda-
tions the broad structure of his fame was laid. How slowly, and
yet by happily prepared steps, he came to his place! All of us
remember — it is only a history of five or six years — the sur-
prise and disappointment of the country at his first nomination
at Chicago. Mr. Seward, then in the culmination of his good
fame, was the favorite of the Eastern States. And when the
new and comparatively unknown name of Lincoln was announced
(notwithstanding the report of the acclamations of that conven-
tion), we heard the result coldly and sadly. It seemed too rash,
on a purely local reputation, to build so grave a trust, in such
anxious times; and men naturally talked of the chances in poli-
tics as incalculable. But it turned out not to be chance. The
profound good opinion which the people of Illinois and of the
West had conceived of him, and which they had imparted to
their colleagues, that they also might justify themselves to their
constituents at home, was not rash, though they did not begin

RALPH WALDO EMERSON 2OOI

to know the richness of his worth. A plain man of the people,
an extraordinary fortune attended him. Lord Bacon says: "Man-
ifest virtues procure reputation; occult ones, fortune." He offered
no shining qualities at the first encounter; he did not offend by
superiority. He had a face and manner which disarmed suspi-
cion, which inspired confidence, which confirmed good-will. He
was a man without vices. He had a strong sense of duty which
it was very easy for him to obey. Then he had what farmers
call a long head; was excellent in working out the sum for him-
self, in arguing his case and convincing you fairly and firmly.
Then it turned out that he was a greater worker, and that, hav-
ing prodigious faculty of performance, he worked easily. A
good worker is so rare; everybody has some one disabling qual-
ity. But this man was found to the very core, cheerful, persist-
ent, all right for labor, and he liked nothing so well. Then he
had a vast good nature, which made him tolerant and accessible
to all; fair-minded, leaning to the claim of the petitioner, affable,
and not sensible to the affliction which the innumerable visits
paid to him, when President, would have brought to any one
else. And how this good nature became a noble humanity in
many a tragic case which the events of the war brought to him,
everyone will remember, and with what increasing tenderness
he dealt when a whole race was on his compassion. The poor
negro said of him, on an impressive occasion, (< Massa Linkum
am ebery where. " Then his broad good humor, running easily
into jocular talk, in which he delighted and in which he ex-
celled, was a rich gift to this wise man. It enabled him to
keep his secret, to meet every kind of man and every rank in
society, to take off the edge of the severest decisions, to mask
his own purpose and sound his companion, and to catch with
true instinct the temper of each company he addressed. And,
more than all, such good nature is to a man of severe labor, in
anxious and exhausting crises, the natural restorative, good as
sleep, and is the protection of the overdriven brain against ran-
cor and insanity. He is the author of a multitude of good say-
ings, so disguised as pleasantries that it is certain that they had
no reputation at first but as jests; and only later, by the accept-
ance and adoption they find in the mouths of millions, turn out
to be the wisdom of the hour. I am sure if this man had ruled
in a period of less facility of printing, he would have become
mythological in a few years, like ^Esop or Pilpay, or one of the
v — 126

2002 RALPH WALDO EMERSON

Seven Wise Masters, by his fables and proverbs. But the weight
and penetration of many passages in his letters, messages, and
speeches, hidden now by the very closeness of their application
to the moment, are destined hereafter to wide fame. What
pregnant definitions; what unerring common sense; what fore-
sight; and on great occasions, what lofty and more than natural,
what humane tone! His occupying the chair of State was a tri-
umph of the good sense of mankind and of the public confidence.
This middle-class country has got a middle-class President at
last. Yes, in manners, sympathies, but not in powers, for his
powers were superior. His mind mastered the problem of the
day; and, as the problem grew, so did his comprehension of it.
Rarely was man so fitted to the event. In the midst of fears
and jealousies, in the babel of counsels and parties, this man
wrought incessantly with all his might and all his honesty, labor-
ing to find what the people wanted, and how to obtain that. It
cannot be said there is any exaggeration of his worth. If ever a
man was fairly tested, he was. There was no lack of resistance,
nor of slander, nor of ridicule. The times have allowed no State
secrets; the nation has been in such a ferment, such multitudes
had to be trusted, that no secret could be kept. Every door was
ajar, and we know all that befell. Then what an occasion was
the whirlwind of the war! Here was place for no holiday mag-
istrate, no fair-weather sailor; the new pilot was hurried to the
helm in a tornado. In four years — the four years of battle-
days — his endurance, his fertility of resources, his magnanimity,
were sorely tried and never found wanting. There, by his cour-
age, his justice, his even temper, his fertile counsel, his humanity,
he stood, an heroic figure in the centre of an heroic epoch. He
is the true history of the American people in his time. Step by
step, he walked before them; slow with their slowness, quicken-
ing his march by theirs; the true representative of this conti-
nent; an entirely public man; father of his country, the pulse
of twenty millions throbbing in his heart, the thought of their
minds articulated by his tongue. Adam Smith remarks that the
ax which in Houbraken's portraits of British kings and worthies
is engraved under those who have suffered at the block adds a
certain lofty charm to the picture. And who does not see, even
in this tragedy so recent, how fast the terror and ruin of the
massacre are already burning into glory around the victim ? Far
happier this fate than to have lived to be wished away; to have

RALPH WALDO EMERSON 2003

watched the decay of his own faculties; to have seen — perhaps,
even he — the proverbial ingratitude of statesmen; to have seen
mean men preferred. Had he not lived long enough to keep
the greatest promise that ever man made to his fellow-men —
the practical abolition of slavery ? He had seen Tennessee, Mis-
souri, and Maryland emancipate their slaves. He had seen Sa-
vannah, Charleston, and Richmond surrendered; had seen the
main army of the Rebellion lay down its arms. He had con-
quered the public opinion of Canada, England, and France. Only
Washington can compare with him in fortune. And what if it
should turn out, in the unfolding of the web, that he had reached
the term; that this heroic deliverer could no longer serve us;
that the rebellion had touched its natural conclusion, and what
remained to be done required new and uncommitted hands — a
new spirit born out of the ashes of the war; and that Heaven,
wishing to show the world a completed benefactor, shall make
him serve his country even more by his death than his life.
Nations, like kings, are not good by facility and complaisance.
"The kindness of kings consists in justice and strength." Easy
good nature has been the dangerous foible of the Republic, and
it was necessary that its enemies should outrage it, and drive us
to unwonted firmness, to secure the salvation of this country in
the next ages.

THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR
(From the Oration Delivered August sist, 1837, at Cambridge)

I HEAR with joy whatever is beginning to be said of the dignity
and necessity of labor to every citizen. There is virtue yet

in the hoe and the spade, for learned as well as for un-
learned hands. And labor is everywhere welcome; always we
are invited to work; only be this limitation observed, that a man
shall not for the sake of wider activity sacrifice any opinion to
the popular judgments and modes of action.

I have spoken of the education of the scholar by nature, by
books, and by action. It remains to say somewhat of his duties.

They are such as become Man Thinking. They may all be
comprised in self-trust. The office of the scholar is to cheer, to
raise, and to guide men by showing them facts amidst appear-
ances. He plies the slow, unhonored, and unpaid task of observ-

2004 RALPH WALDO EMERSON

ation. Flamsteed and Herschel, in their glazed observatories,
may catalogue the stars with the praise of all men, and, the re-
sults being splendid and useful, honor is sure. But he, in his
private observatory, cataloguing obscure and nebulous stars of
the human mind, which as yet no man has thought of as such,
— -watching days and months, sometimes, for a few facts; cor-
recting still his old records, — must relinquish display and im-
mediate fame. In the long period of his preparation, he must
betray often an ignorance and shiftlessness in popular arts, incur-
ring the disdain of the able who shoulder him aside. Long he
must stammer in his speech; often forego the living for the
dead. Worse yet, he must accept, — how often! poverty and soli-
tude. For the ease and pleasure of treading the old road, ac-
cepting the fashions, the education, the religion of society, he
takes the cross of making his own, and, of course, the self-
accusation, the faint heart, the frequent uncertainty and loss of
time, which are the nettles and tangling vines in the way of the
self-relying and self-directed; and the state of virtual hostility in
which he seems to stand to society, and especially to educated
society. For all this loss and scorn, what offset ? He is to find
consolation in exercising the highest functions of human nature.
He is one who raises himself from private considerations, and
breathes and lives on public and illustrious thoughts. He is the
world's eye. He is the world's heart. He is to resist the vulgar
prosperity that retrogrades ever to barbarism, by preserving and
communicating heroic sentiments, noble biographies, melodious
verse, and the conclusions of history. Whatsoever oracles the
human heart, in all emergencies, in all solemn hours, has uttered
as its commentary on the world of actions, — these he shall re-
ceive and impart. And whatsoever new verdict Reason from her
inviolable seat pronounces on the passing men and events of to-
day,— this he shall hear and promulgate.

These being his functions, it becomes him to feel all confidence
in himself, and to defer never to the popular cry. He, and he
only, knows the world. The world of any moment is the merest
appearance. Some great decorum, some fetish of a government,
some ephemeral trade, or war, or man, is cried up by half man-
kind and cried down by the other half, as if all depended on
this particular up or down. The odds are that the whole ques-
tion is not worth the poorest thought which the scholar has lost
in listening to the controversy. Let him not quit his belief that

RALPH WALDO EMERSON

2005

a popgun is a popgun, though the ancient and honorable of the
earth affirm it to be the crack of doom. In silence, in steadi-
ness, in severe abstraction, let him hold by himself; add observa-
tion to observation, patient of neglect, patient of reproach; and
bide his own time, — happy enough, if he can satisfy himself alone,
that this day he has seen something truly. Success treads on
every right step. For the instinct is sure that prompts him to
tell his brother what he thinks. He then learns that, in going
down into the secrets of his own mind, he has descended into the
secrets of all minds. He learns that he who has mastered any
law in his private thoughts is master to that extent of all men
whose language he speaks, and of all into whose language his
own can be translated. The poet, in utter solitude remembering
his spontaneous thoughts and recording them, is found to have
recorded that which men in crowded cities find true for them
also. The orator distrusts at first the fitness of his frank confes-
sions,— his want of knowledge of the persons he addresses, — un-
til he finds that he is the complement of his hearers; that they
drink his words because he fulfills for them their own nature;
the deeper he dives into his privatest, secretest presentiment, to
his wonder he finds this is the most acceptable, most public, and
universally true. The people delight in it; the better part of
every man feels, This is my music, this is myself.

In self-trust, all the virtues are comprehended. Free should
the scholar be, — free and brave. Free even to the definition of
freedom, "without any hindrance that does not arise out of his
own constitution.* Brave; for fear is a thing which a scholar,
by his very function, puts behind him. Fear always springs
from ignorance. It is a shame to him if his tranquillity, amid
dangerous times, arise from the presumption that, like children
and women, his is a protected class; or if he seek a temporary
peace by the diversion of his thoughts from politics or vexed
questions, hiding his head like an ostrich in the flowering bushes,
peeping into microscopes, and turning rhymes, as a boy whistles
to keep his courage up. So is the danger a danger still; so is
the fear worse. Manlike let him turn and face it. Let him
look into its eye and search its nature, inspect its origin, — see
the whelping of this lion, which lies no great way back; he will
then find in himself a perfect comprehension of its nature and
extent; he will have made his hands meet on the other side,
and can henceforth defy it, and pass on superior. The world is

2006 - RALPH WALDO EMERSON

his, who can see through its pretension. What deafness, what
stone-blind custom, what overgrown error you behold, is there
only by sufferance, — by your sufferance. See it to be a lie, and
you have already dealt it its mortal blow.

Yes, we are the cowed, — we the trustless. It is a mischievous
notion that we are come late into nature; that the world was
finished a long time ago. As the world was plastic and fluid in
the hands of God, so it is ever to so much of his attributes as
we bring to it. To ignorance and sin, it is flint. They adapt
themselves to it as they may; but in proportion as a man has
anything in him divine, the firmament flows before him and
takes his signet and form. Not he is great who can alter mat-
ter, but he who can alter my state of mind. They are the kings
of the world who give the color of their present thought to
all nature and all art, and persuade men by the cheerful serenity
of their carrying the matter, that this thing which they do is the
apple which the ages have desired to pluck, now at last ripe,
and inviting nations to the harvest. The great man makes the
great thing. Wherever Macdonald sits, there is the head of the
table. Linnaeus makes botany the most alluring of studies, and
wins it from the farmer and the herb-woman; Davy, chemistry;
and Cuvier, fossils. The day is always his who works in it with
serenity and great aims. The unstable estimates of men crowd
to him whose mind is filled with a truth, as the heaped waves of
the Atlantic follow the moon.

For this self -trust, the reason is deeper than can be fathomed,
— darker than can be enlightened. I might not carry with me
the feeling of my audience in stating my own belief. But I have
already shown the ground of my hope, in adverting to the doc-
trine that man is one. I believe man has been wronged; he has
wronged himself. He has almost lost the light that can lead him
back to his prerogatives. Men are' become of no account Men
in history, men in the world of to-day are bugs, are spawn, and
are called <( the mass » and (< the herd. w In a century, in a mil-
lenium, one or two men; that is to say, one or two approxima-
tions to the right state of every man. All the rest behold in the
hero or the poet their own green and crude being, — ripened;
yes, and are content to be less, so that may attain to its full
stature. What a testimony, full of grandeur, full of pity, is borne
to the demands of his own nature, by vv>e poor clansman, the
poor partisan, who rejoices in the glory of his chief. The poor

RALPH WALDO EMERSON

2007

and the low find some amends to their immense moral capacity,
for their acquiescence in a political and social inferiority. They
are content to be brushed like flies from the path of a great per-
son, so that justice shall be done by him to that common nature
which it is the dearest desire of all to see enlarged and glorified.
They sun themselves in the great man's light, and feel it to be
their own element. They cast the dignity of man from their
downtrod selves upon the shoulders of a hero, and will perish to
add one drop of blood to make that great heart beat, those giant
sinews combat and conquer. He lives for us and we live in him.
Men such as they are very naturally seek money or power;
and power because it is as good as money, — the <( spoils," so
called, w of office. w And why not ? for they aspire to the highest,
and this, in their sleep-walking, they dream is highest. Wake
them, and they shall quit the false good and leap to the true,
and leave governments to clerks and desks. This revolution is
to be wrought by the gradual domestication of the idea of cul-
ture. The main enterprise of the world for splendor, for extent,
is the upbuilding of a man. Here are the materials strewn
along the ground. The private life of one man shall be a more
illustrious monarchy, — more formidable to its enemy, more sweet
and serene in its influence to its friend, than any kingdom in
history. For a man, rightly viewed, comprehendeth the particu-
lar natures of all men. Each philosopher, each bard, each actor,
has only done for me, as by a delegate, what one day I can do
for myself. The books which once we valued more than the
apple of the eye, we have quite exhausted. What is that but
saying that we have come up with the point of view which the
universal mind took through the eyes of one scribe; we have
been that man and have passed on. First, one; then, another;
we drain all cisterns, and, waxing greater by all these supplies,
we crave a better and more abundant food. The man has never
lived that can feed us ever. The human mind cannot be en-
shrined in a person who shall set a barrier on any one side to
this unbounded, unboundable empire. It is one central fire,
which, flaming now out of the lips of Etna, lightens the capes of
Sicily; and now out of the throat of Vesuvius, illuminates the
towers and vineyards of Naples. It is one light which beams
out of a thousand stars. It is one soul which animates all men.

200g RALPH WALDO EMERSON

MAN THE REFORMER

(Peroration of the Address before the Mechanics' Apprentices' Library Asso-
ciation, Boston, January 25th, 1841)

WHAT is a man born for but to be a Reformer, a Re-maker
of what man has made; a renouncer of lies; a restorer
of truth and good, imitating that great Nature which em-
bosoms us all, and which sleeps no moment on an old past, but
every hour repairs herself, yielding us every morning a new day,
and with every pulsation a new life ? Let him renounce every-
thing which is not true to him, and put all his practices back on
their first thoughts, and do nothing for which he has not the
whole world for his reason. If there are inconveniences, and
what is called ruin, in the way, because we have so enervated
and maimed ourselves, yet it would be like dying of perfumes to
sink in the effort to reattach the deeds of every day to the holy
and mysterious recesses of life.

The power, which is at once spring and regulator in all efforts
of reform, is the conviction that there is an infinite worthiness in
man which will appear at the call of worth, and that all particu-
lar reforms are the removing of some impediment. Is it not
the highest duty that man should be honored in us ? I ought
not to allow any man, because he has broad lands, to feel that
he is rich in my presence. I ought to make him feel that I can
do without his riches, that I cannot be bought, — neither by com-
fort, neither by pride, — and though I be utterly penniless, and
receiving bread from him, that he is the poor man beside me.
And if, at the same time, a woman or a child discover a senti-
ment of piety, or a juster way of thinking than mine, I ought to
confess it by my respect and obedience, though it go to alter my
whole way of life.

The Americans have many virtues, but they have not Faith
and Hope. I know no two words whose meaning is more lost
sight of. We use these words as if they were as obsolete as
Selah and Amen. And yet they have the broadest meaning, and
the most cogent application to Boston in 1841. The Americans
have no faith. They rely on the power of a dollar; they are
deaf to a sentiment. They think you may talk the north wind
down as easily as raise society; and no class more faithless than
the scholars or intellectual men. Now, if I talk with a sincere,

RALPH WALDO EMERSON 3OO9

wise man, and my friend with a poet, with a conscientious youth
who is still under the dominion of his own wild thoughts, and
not yet harnessed in the team of society to drag with us all in
the ruts of custom, I see at once how paltry is all this genera-
tion of unbelievers, and what a house of cards their institutions
are, and I see what one brave man, what one great thought exe-
cuted might effect. I see that the reason of the distrust of the
practical man in all theory is his inability to perceive the means
whereby we work. Look, he says, at the tools with which this
world of yours is to be built. As we cannot make a planet with
atmosphere, rivers, and forests, by means of the best carpenter's
or engineer's tools, with chemist's laboratory and smith s forge
to boot, so neither can we ever construct that heavenly society
you prate of out of foolish, sick, selfish men and women, such as
we know them to be. But the believer not only beholds his
heaven to be possible, but already to begin to exist, — not by the
men or materials the statesman uses, but by men transfigured
and raised above themselves by the power of principles. To
principles something else is possible that transcends all the power
of expedients.

Every great and commanding moment in the annals of the
world is the triumph of some enthusiasm. The victories of the
Arabs after Mahomet, who, in a few years, from a small and
mean beginning, established a larger empire than that of Rome,
is an example. They did they knew not what. The naked
Derar, horsed on an idea, was found an overmatch for a troop
of Roman cavalry. The women fought like men, and conquered
the Roman men. They were miserably equipped, miserably fed.
They were Temperance troops. There was neither brandy nor
flesh needed to feed them. They conquered Asia and Africa
and Spain on barley. The Caliph Omar's walking-stick struck
more terror into those who saw it than another man's sword.
His diet was barley bread; his sauce was salt; and oftentimes, by
way of abstinence, he ate his bread without salt. His drink was
water; his palace was built of mud; and when he left Medina
to go to the conquest of Jerusalem, he rode on a red camel,
with a wooden platter hanging at his saddle, with a bottle of
water and two sacks, one holding barley and the other dried
fruits.

But there will dawn ere long on our politics, on our modes
of living, a nobler morning than that Arabian faith, in the senti-

2010

RALPH WALDO EMERSON

ment of love. This is the one remedy for all ills, the panacea
of nature. We must be lovers, and at once the impossible be-
comes possible. Our age and history, for these thousand years,
has not been the history of kindness but of selfishness. Our dis-
trust is very expensive. The money we spend for courts and
prisons is very ill laid out. We make by distrust the thief and
burglar and incendiary, and by our court and jail we keep him so.
An acceptance of the sentiment of love throughout Christendom
for a season would bring the felon and the outcast to our side in
tears, with the devotion of his faculties to our service. See this
wide society of laboring men and women. We allow ourselves
to be served by them, we live apart from them, and meet them
without a salute in the streets. We do not greet their talents,
nor rejoice in their good fortune, nor foster their hopes, nor in
the assembly of the people vote for what is dear to them. Thus
we enact the part of the selfish noble and king from the foun-
dation of the world. See, this tree always bears one fruit. In
every household the peace of a pair is poisoned by the malice,
slyness, indolence, and alienation of domestics. Let any two ma-
trons meet, and observe how soon their conversation turns on
the troubles from their "help,* as our phrase is. In every knot
of laborers, the rich man does not feel himself among his friends,
• — and at the polls he finds them arrayed in a mass in distinct
opposition to him. We complain that the politics of masses of
the people are controlled by designing men, and led in opposi-
tion to manifest justice and the common weal, and to their own
interest But the people do not wish to be represented or ruled
by the ignorant and base. They only vote for these because
they were asked with the voice and semblance of kindness.
They will not vote for them long. They inevitably prefer wit
and probity. To use an Egyptian metaphor, it is not their will
for any long time <( to raise the nails of wild beasts, and to de-
press the heads of the sacred birds. * Let our affection flow out
to our fellows; it would operate in a day the greatest of all rev-
olutions. It is better to work on institutions by the sun than by
the wind. The state must consider the poor man, and all voices
must speak for him. Every child that is born must have a just
chance for his bread. Let the amelioration in our laws of prop-
erty proceed from the concession of the rich, not from the grasp-
ing of the poor. Let us begin by habitual imparting. Let us
understand that the equitable rule is, that no one should take

RALPH WALDO EMERSON 2OII

more than his share, let him be ever so rich. Let me feel that
I am to be a lover. I am to see to it that the world is the
better for me and to find my reward in the act. Love would
put a new face on this weary old world in which we dwell as
pagans and enemies too long, and it would warm the heart to
see how fast the vain diplomacy of statesmen, the impotence
of armies and navies and lines of defense would be superseded
by this unarmed child. Love will creep where it cannot go, will
accomplish that by imperceptible methods, — being its own lever,
fulcrum, and power, — which force could never achieve. Have
you not seen in the woods, in a late autumn morning, a poor
fungus or mushroom, — a plant without any solidity, nay, that
seemed nothing but a soft mush or jelly, — by its constant, total,
and inconceivably gentle pushing, manage to break its way up
through the frosty ground, and actually to lift a hard crust on
its head ? It is the symbol of the power of kindness. The vir-
tue of this principle in human society in application to great
interests is obsolete and forgotten. Once or twice in history it
has been tried in illustrious instances, with signal success. This
great, overgrown, dead Christendom of ours still keeps alive at
least the name of a lover of mankind. But one day all men
will be lovers; and every calamity will be dissolved in the uni-
versal sunshine.

Will you suffer me to add one trait more to this portrait of
man the reformer? The mediator between the spiritual and the
actual world should have a great prospective prudence. An
Arabian poet describes his hero by saying: —

* Sunshine was he
In the winter day;
And in the midsummer
Coolness and shade. w

He who would help himself and others should not be a subject
of irregular and interrupted impulses of virtue, but a continent,
persisting, immovable person, — such as we have seen a few scat-
tered up and down in time for the blessing of the world; men
who have in the gravity of their nature a quality which answers
to the fly-wheel in a mill, which distributes the motion equably
over all the wheels, and hinders it from falling unequally and
suddenly in destructive shocks. It is better that joy should be
spread over all the day in the form of strength than that it should

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be concentrated into ecstasies, full of danger and followed by re-
actions. There is a sublime prudence which is the very highest
that we know of man, which, believing in a vast future, — sure
of more to come than is yet seen, — postpones always the present
hour to the whole life; postpones talent to genius, and special
results to character. As the merchant gladly takes money from
his income to add to his capital, so is the great man very will-
ing to lose particular powers and talents, so that he gain in the
elevation of his life. The opening of the spiritual senses dis-
poses men ever to greater sacrifices, to leave their signal talents,
their best means and skill of procuring a present success, their
power and their fame, — to cast all things behind, in the insatia-
ble thirst for divine communications. A purer fame, a greater
power rewards the sacrifice. It is the conversion of our harvest
into seed. As the farmer casts into the ground the finest ears
of his grain, the time will come when we, too, shall hold nothing
back, but shall eagerly convert more than we now possess into
means and powers, when we shall be willing to sow the sun and
the moon for seeds.

USES OF GREAT MEN

(Delivered in 1850, as the First of a Series of Seven Addresses on Represen-
tative Men)

IT is natural to believe in great men. If the companions of our
childhood should turn out to be heroes, and their condition

regal, it would not surprise us. All mythology opens with
demigods, and the circumstance is high and poetic; that is, their
genius is paramount. In the legends of the Gautama, the first
men ate the earth, and found it deliciously sweet.

Nature seems to exist for the excellent. The world is upheld
by the veracity of good men; they make the earth wholesome.
They who lived with them found life glad and nutritious. Life
is sweet and tolerable only in our belief in such society; and
actually or ideally we manage to live with superiors. We call
our children and our lands by their names. Their names are
wrought into the verbs of language, their works and effigies are
in our houses, and every circumstance of the day recalls an anec-
dote of them.

The search after the great is the dream of youth, and the
most serious occupation of manhood. We travel into foreign

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parts to find his works, — if possible, to get a glimpse of him.
But we are put off with fortune instead. You say the English
are practical; the Germans are hospitable; in Valencia the cli-
mate is delicious; and in the hills of the Sacramento there is
gold for the gathering. Yes, but I do not travel to find comfort-
able, rich, and hospitable people, or clear sky, or ingots that cost
too much. But if there were any magnet that would point to
the countries and houses where are the persons who are intrin-
sically rich and powerful, I would sell all and buy it and put
myself on the road to-day.

The race goes with us on their credit. The knowledge that
in the city is a man who invented the railroad raises the credit
of all the citizens. But enormous populations, if they be beg-
gars, are disgusting, like moving cheese, like hills of ants, or of
fleas — the more, the worse.

Our religion is the love and cherishing of these patrons. The
gods of fable are the shining moments of great men. We run
all our vessels into one mold. Our colossal theologies of Juda-
ism, Christism, Buddhism, Mahometism, are the necessary and
structural action of the human mind. The student of history is
like a man going into a warehouse to buy cloths or carpets. He
fancies he has a new article. If he go to the factory, he shall
find that his new stuff still repeats the scrolls and rosettes which
are found on the interior walls of the pyramids of Thebes. Our
Theism is the purification of the human mind. Man can paint,
or make, or think nothing but man. He believes that the great
material elements had their origin from his thought. And our
philosophy finds one essence collected or distributed.

If now we proceed to inquire into the kinds of service we
derive from others, let us be warned of the danger of modern
studies, and begin low enough. We must not contend against
love, or deny the substantial existence of other people. I know
not what would happen to us. We have social strengths. Our
affection towards others creates a sort of vantage or purchase,
which nothing will supply. I can do that by another which I
cannot do alone. I can say to you what I cannot first say to
myself. Other men are lenses through which we read our own
minds. Each man seeks those of different quality from his own,
and such as are good of their kind; that is, he seeks other men,
and the otherest. The stronger the nature, the more it is react-
ive. Let us have the quality pure. A little genius let us leave

20I4 RALPH WALDO EMERSON

alone. A main difference betwixt men is, whether they attend
their own affair or not. Man is that noble endogenous plant
which grows, like the palm, from within, outward. His own
affair, though impossible to others, he can open with celerity
and in sport. It is easy to sugar to be sweet, and to nitre to
be salt. We take a great deal of pains to waylay and entrap
that which of itself will fall into our hands. I count him a
great man who inhabits a higher sphere of thought, into which
other men rise with labor and difficulty; he has but to open his
eyes to see things in a true light, and in large relations; whilst
they must make painful corrections, and keep a vigilant eye on
many sources of error. His service to us is of like sort. It
costs a beautiful person no exertion to paint her image on our
eyes; yet how splendid is that benefit! It costs no more for a
wise soul to convey his quality to other men. And every one
can do his best thing easiest. Peu de moyens, beaucoup d'efftt.
He is great who is what he is from nature, and who never re-
minds us of others.

But he must be related to us, and our life receive from him
some promise of explanation. I cannot tell what I would know;
but I have observed there are persons who, in their character
and actions, answer questions which I have not skill to put.
One man answers some question which none of his contempo-
raries put, and is isolated. The past and passing religions and
philosophies answer some other question. Certain men affect us
as rich possibilities, but helpless to themselves and to their times,
— the sport, perhaps, of some instinct that rules in the air; they
do not speak to our want. But the great are near; we know
them at sight. They satisfy expectation, and fall into place.
What is good is effective, generative; makes for itself room, food,
and allies. A sound apple produces seed; a hybrid does not. Is
a man in his place, he is constructive, fertile, magnetic, inundat-
ing armies with his purpose, which is thus executed. The river
makes its own shores, and each legitimate idea makes it own
channels and welcome, — harvests for food, institutions for expres-
sion, weapons to fight with, and disciples to explain it. The
true artist has the planet for his pedestal; the adventurer, after
years of strife, has nothing broader than his own shoes.

Our common discourse respects two kinds of use or service
from superior men. Direct giving is agreeable to the early belief
of men; direct giving of material or metaphysical aid, as of

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health, eternal youth, fine senses, arts of healing, magical power,
and prophecy. The boy believes there is a teacher who can sell
him wisdom. Churches believe in imputed merit. But, in strict-
ness, we are not much cognizant of direct serving. Man is en-
dogenous, and education is his unfolding. The aid we have from
others is mechanical, compared with the discoveries of nature in
us. What is thus learned is delightful in the doing, and the
effect remains. Right ethics are central, and go from the soul
outward. Gift is contrary to the law of the universe. Serving
others is serving us. I must absolve me to myself. (< Mind thy
affair, M says the spirit ; " coxcomb, would you meddle with the
skies, or with other people ? w Indirect service is left. Men have
a pictorial or representative quality, and serve us in the intellect.
Behmen and Swedenborg saw that things were representative.
Men are also representative — first, of things, and secondly, of
ideas.

As plants convert the minerals into food for animals, so each
man converts some raw material in nature to human use. The
inventors of fire, electricity, magnetism, iron, lead, glass, linen,
silk, cotton; the makers of tools; the inventor of decimal nota-
tion; the geometer; the engineer; the musician, — severally make
an easy way for all, through unknown and impossible confusions.
Each man is, by secret liking, connected with some district of
nature, whose agent and interpreter he is, as Linnaeus, of plants:
Huber, of bees; Fries, of lichens; Van Mons, of pears; Dalton,
of atomic forms; Euclid, of lines; Newton, of fluxions.

A man is a centre for nature, running out threads of relation
through everything, fluid and solid, material and elemental. The
earth rolls; every clod and stone comes to the meridian; so every
organ, function, acid, crystal, grain of dust, has its relation to
the brain. It waits long, but its turn comes. Each plant has
its parasite, and each created thing its lover and poet. Justice
has already been done to steam, to iron, to wood, to coal, to
loadstone, to iodine, to corn, and cotton; but how few materials
are yet used by our arts! The mass of creatures and of quali-
ties are still hid and expectant. It would seem as if each waited,
like the enchanted princess in fairy tales, for a destined human
deliverer. Each must be disenchanted, and walk forth to the
day in human shape. In the history of discovery, the ripe and
latent truth seems to have fashioned a brain for itself. A
magnet must be made man, in some Gilbert, or Swedenborg,

20 ! 6 RALPH WALDO EMERSON

or Oersted, before the general mind can come to entertain its
powers.

If we limit ourselves to the first advantages; — a sober grace
adheres to the mineral and botanic kingdoms which, in the high-
est moments, comes up as the charm of nature, — the glitter of
the spar, the sureness of affinity, the veracity of angles. Light
and darkness, heat and cold, hunger and food, sweet and sour,
solid, liquid, and gas, circle us round in a wreath of pleasures,
and, by their agreeable quarrel, beguile the day of life. The eye
repeats everyday the first eulogy on things — <( He saw that they
were good." We know where to find them; and these perform-
ers are relished all the more after a little experience of the pre-
tending races. We are entitled, also, to higher advantages.
Something is wanting to science until it has been humanized.
The table of logarithms is one thing, and its vital play in botany,
music, optics, and architecture, another. There are advancements
to numbers, anatomy, architecture, astronomy, little suspected at
first, when, by union with intellect and will, they ascend into the
life, and reappear in conversation, character, and politics.

But this comes later. We speak now only of our acquaint-
ance with them in their own sphere, and the way in which they
seem to fascinate and draw to them some genius who occupies
himself with one thing all his life long. The possibility of in-
terpretation lies in the identity of the observer with the observed.
Each material thing has its celestial side — has its translation,
through humanity, into the spiritual and necessary sphere, where
it plays a part as indestructible as any other. And to these,
their ends, all things continually ascend. The gases gather to
the solid firmament: the chemic lump arrives at the plant and
grows; arrives at the quadruped, and walks; arrives at the man,
and thinks. But also the constituency determines the vote of
the representative. He is not only representative, but partici-
pant. Like can only be known by like. The reason why he
knows about them is that he is of them; he has just come out
of nature, or from being a part of that thing. Animated chlorine
knows of chlorine, and incarnate zinc of zinc. Their quality
makes his career, and he can variously publish their virtues be-
cause they compose him. Man, made of the dust of the world,
does not forget his origin; and all that is yet inanimate will one
day speak and reason. Unpublished nature will have its whole
secret told. Shall we say that quartz mountains will pulverize

RALPH WALDO EMERSON 2O,7

into innumerable Werners, Von Buchs, and Beaumonts, and the
laboratory of the atmosphere holds in solution I know not what
Berzeliuses and Davys ?

Thus we sit by the fire and take hold on the poles of the
earth. This quasi omnipresence supplies the imbecility of our
condition. In one of those celestial days when heaven and earth
meet and adorn each other, it seems a poverty that we can only
spend it once- we wish for a thousand heads, a thousand bodies,
that we might celebrate its immense beauty in many ways and
places. Is this fancy ? Well, in good faith, we are multiplied by
our proxies. How easily we adopt their labors! Every ship that
comes to America got its chart from Columbus. Every novel is
a debtor to Homer. Every carpenter who shaves with a fore-
plane borrows the genius of a forgotten inventor. Life is girt
all round with a zodiac of sciences — the contributions of men
who have perished to add their point of light to our sky. En-
gineer, broker, jurist, physician, moralist, theologian, and every
man, in as much as he has any science, is a definer and map-
maker of the latitudes and longitudes of our condition. These
road-makers on every hand enrich us. We must extend the area
of life, and multiply our relations. We are as much gainers by
finding a new property in the old earth as by acquiring a new
planet.

We are too passive in the reception of these material or semi-
material aids. We must not be sacks and stomachs. To ascend
one step we are better served through our sympathy. Activity
is contagious. Looking where others look, and conversing with
the same things, we catch the charm which lured them. Napo-
leon said: "You must not fight too often with one enemy, or
you will teach him all your art of war.w Talk much with any
man of vigorous mind, and we acquire very fast the habit of
looking at things in the same light, and on each occurrence we
anticipate his thought.

Men are helpful through the intellect and the affections.
Other help, I find a false appearance. If you affect to give me
bread and fire, I perceive that I pay for it the full price, and at
last it leaves me as it found me, neither better nor worse. But
all mental and moral force is a positive good. It goes out from
you whether you will or not, and profits me whom you never
thought of. I cannot even hear of personal vigor of any kind,
great power of performance, without fresh resolution. We are
emulous of all that man can do. Cecil's saying of Sir Walter
v — 127

20Ig RALPH WALDO EMERSON

Raleigh, <( I know that he can toil terribly, * is an electric touch.
So are Clarendon's portraits, — of Hampden, "who was of an in-
dustry and vigilance not to be tired out or wearied by the most
laborious, and of parts not to be imposed on by the most subtle
and sharp, and of a personal courage equal to his best parts, B —
of Falkland, "who was so severe an adorer of truth that he could
as easily have given himself leave to steal as to dissemble.* We
cannot read Plutarch without a tingling of the blood, and I ac-
cept the saying of the Chinese Mencius: "A sage is the instructor
of a hundred ages. When the manners of Loo are heard of, the
stupid become intelligent, and the wavering determined."

This is the moral of biography; yet it is hard for departed
men to touch the quick like our own companions, whose names
may not last as long. What is he whom I never think of ? whilst
in every solitude are those who succor our genius and stimulate
us in wonderful manners. There is a power in love to divine
another's destiny better than that other can, and, by heroic en-
couragements, hold him to his task. What has friendship so
signal as its sublime attraction to whatever virtue is in us ? We
will never more think cheaply of ourselves or of life. We are
piqued to some purpose, and the industry of the diggers on the
railroad will not again shame us.

Under this head, too, falls that homage, very pure, as I think,
which all ranks pay to the hero of the day, from Coriolanus and
Gracchus down to Pitt, Lafayette, Wellington, Webster, Lamar.
tine. Hear the shouts in the streets! The people cannot see
him enough. They delight in a man. Here is a head and a
trunk! What a front! what eyes! Atlantean shoulders, and the
whole carriage heroic, with equal inward force to guide the great
machine! This pleasure of full expression to that which, in their
private experience, is usually cramped and obstructed, runs, also,
much higher, and is the secret of the reader's joy in literary
genius. Nothing is kept back. There is fire enough to fuse the
mountain of ore. Shakespeare's principal merit may be con-
veyed in saying that he, of all men, best understands the Eng-
lish language, and can say what he will. Yet these unchoked
channels and floodgates of expression are only health or fortunate
constitution. Shakespeare's name suggests other and purely in-
tellectual benefits.

Senates and sovereigns have no compliment, with their medals,
swords, and armorial coats, like the addressing to a human being
thoughts out of a certain height, and presupposing his intelli-

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gence. This honor, which is possible in personal intercourse
scarcely twice in a lifetime, genius perpetually pays; contented,
if now and then, in a century, the proffer is accepted. The indi-
cators of the values of matter are degraded to a sort of cooks
and confectioners, on the appearance of the indicators of ideas.
Genius is the naturalist or geographer of the supersensible re-
gions, and draws their map; and, by acquainting us with new
fields of activity, cools our affection for the old. These are at
once accepted as the reality, of which the world we have con-
versed with is the show.

We go to the gymnasium and the swimming-school to see the
power and beauty of the body; there is the like pleasure, and a
higher benefit, from witnessing intellectual feats of all kinds; as
feats of memory, of mathematical combination, great power of
abstraction, the transmutings of the imagination, even versatility,
and concentration, as these acts expose the invisible organs and
members of the mind, which respond, member for member, to
the parts of the body. For we thus enter a new gymnasium,
and learn to choose men by their truest marks, taught, with
Plato, (<to choose those who can, without aid from the eyes, or
any other sense, proceed to truth and to being." Foremost
among these activities are the somersaults, spells, and resurrec-
tions, wrought by the imagination. When this wakes, a man
seems to multiply ten times or a thousand times his force. It
opens the delicious sense of indeterminate size, and inspires an
audacious mental habit. We are as elastic as the gas of gun-
powder, and a sentence in a book or a word dropped in conver-
sation sets free our fancy, and instantly our heads are bathed
with galaxies, and our feet tread the floor of the pit. And this
benefit is real, because we are entitled to these enlargements,
and, once having passed the bounds, shall never again be quite
the miserable pedants we were.

The high functions of the intellect are so allied that some
imaginative power usually appears in all eminent minds, even in
arithmeticians of the first class, but especially in meditative men
of an intuitive habit of thought. This class serve us, so that
they have the perception of identity and the perception of reac-
tion. The eyes of Plato, Shakespeare, Swedenborg, Goethe, never
shut on either of these laws. The perception of these laws is a
kind of metre of the mind. Little minds are little, through fail-
ure to see them.

2020 RALPH WALDO EMERSON

Even these feats have their surfeit. Our delight in reason
degenerates into idolatry of the herald. Especially when a mind
of powerful method has instructed men, we find the examples of
oppression. The dominion of Aristotle, the Ptolemaic astronomy,
the credit of Luther, of Bacon, of Locke, — in religion, the his-
tory of hierarchies, of saints, and the sects which have taken the
name of each founder, are in point. Alas! every man is such a
victim. The imbecility of men is always inviting the impudence
of power. It is the delight of vulgar talent to dazzle and to
bind the beholder. But true genius seeks to defend us from
itself. True genius will not impoverish, but will liberate, and
add new senses. If a wise man should appear in our village, he
would create in those who conversed with him a new conscious-
ness of wealth by opening their eyes to unobserved advantages;
he would establish a sense of immovable equality, calm us with
assurances that we could not be cheated, as every one would dis-
cern the checks and guaranties of condition. The rich would
see their mistakes and poverty, the poor their escapes and their
resources.

But nature brings all this about in due time. Rotation is her
remedy. The soul is impatient of masters, and eager for change.
Housekeepers say of a domestic who has been valuable, <( She
had lived with me long enough." We are tendencies, or, rather,
symptoms, and none of us complete. We touch and go, and sip
the foam of many lives. Rotation is the law of nature. When
nature removes a great man, people explore the horizon for [a
successor; but none comes, and none will. His class is extin-
guished with him. In some other and quite different field, the
next man will appear; not Jefferson, not Franklin, but now a
great salesman; then a road-contractor; then a student of fishes;
then a buffalo-hunting explorer, or a semi-savage western gen-
eral. Thus we make a stand against our rougher masters; but
against the best there is a finer remedy. The power which they
communicate is not theirs. When we are exalted by ideas, we
do not owe this to Plato, but to the idea, to which, also, Plato
was debtor.

I must not forget that we have a special debt to a single
class. Life is a scale of degrees. Between rank and rank of
our great men are wide intervals. Mankind have, in all ages,
attached themselves to a few persons, who, either by the quality
of that idea they embodied, or by the largeness of their recep-

RALPH WALDO EMERSON 2O2I

tion, were entitled to the position of leaders and law-givers.
These teach us the qualities of primary nature, — admit us to the
constitution of things. We swim, day by day, on a river of
delusions, and are effectually amused with houses and towns in
the air, of which the men about us are dupes. But life is a
sincerity. In lucid intervals we say : « Let there be an entrance
opened for me into realities; I have worn the fool's cap too
long. w We will know the meaning of our economies and politics.
Give us the cipher, and, if persons and things are scores of a
celestial music, let us read off the strains. We have been cheated
of our reason; yet there have been sane men, who enjoyed a
rich and related existence. What they know, they know for us.
With each new mind, a new secret of nature transpires; nor can
the Bible be closed, until the last great man is born. These
men correct the delirium of the animal spirits, make us consid-
erate, and engage us to new aims and powers. The veneration
of mankind selects these for the highest place. Witness the
multitude of statues, pictures, and memorials which recall their
genius in every city, village, house, and ship: —

*Ever their phantoms arise before us,

Our loftier brothers, but one in blood;
At bed and table they lord it o'er us,

With looks of beauty, and words of good.w

How are we to illustrate the distinctive benefit of ideas, the
service rendered by those who introduce moral truths into the
general mind ? I am plagued, in all my living, with a perpetual
tariff of prices. If I work in my garden and prune an apple tree,
I am well enough entertained, and could continue indefinitely in
the like occupation. But it comes to mind that a day is gone and
I have got this precious nothing done. I go to Boston or New
York and run up and down on my affairs; they are sped, but so
is the day. I am vexed by the recollection of this price I have
paid for a trifling advantage. I remember the peau d'ane, on
which whoso sat should have his desire, but a piece of the skin
was gone for every wish. I go to a convention of philanthro-
pists. Do what I can, I cannot keep my eyes off the clock. But
if there should appear in the company some gentle soul who
knows little of persons or parties, of Carolina or Cuba, but who
announces a law that disposes these particulars, and so certifies
me of the equity which checkmates every false player, bankrupts

2022 RALPH WALDO EMERSON

every self-seeker, and apprises me of my independence on any
conditions of country, or time, or human body, that man liberates
me; I forget the clock. I pass out of the sore relation to per-
sons. I am healed of my hurts. I am made immortal by ap-
prehending my possession of incorruptible goods. Here is great
competition of rich and poor. We live in a market where is
only so much wheat, or wool, or land; and if I have so much
more, every other must have so much less. I seem to have no
good, without breach of good manners. Nobody is glad in the
gladness of another, and our system is one of war, of an injuri-
ous superiority. Every child of the Saxon race is educated to
wish to be first. It is our system; and a man comes to meas-
ure his greatness by the regrets, envies, and hatreds of his com-
petitors. But in these new fields there is room; here are no
self-esteems, no exclusions.

I admire great men of all classes, those who stand for facts
and for thoughts ; I like rough and smooth, <( Scourges of God, w
and (< Darlings of the human race. w I like the first Caesar and
Charles V. of Spain, and Charles XII. of Sweden, Richard Plan-
tagenet, and Bonaparte in France. I applaud a sufficient man,
an officer equal to his office; captains, ministers, senators. I like
a master standing firm on legs of iron, well-born, rich, hand-
some, eloquent, loaded with advantages, drawing all men by fas-
cination into tributaries and supporters of his power. Sword
and staff, or talents sword-like or staff-like, carry on the work of
the world. But I find him greater when he can abolish himself
and all heroes by letting in this element of reason, irrespective
of persons; this subtilizer and irresistible upward force into our
thought, destroying individualism; the power so great that the
potentate is nothing. Then he is a monarch who gives a consti-
tution to his people; a pontiff who preaches the equality of souls
and releases his servants from their barbarous homages; an em-
peror who can spare his empire.

But I intended to specify, with a little minuteness, two or
three points of service. Nature never spares the opium or ne-
penthe; but, wherever she mars her creature with some deform-
ity or defect, lays her poppies plentifully on the bruise, and the
sufferer goes joyfully through life, ignorant of the ruin, and in-
capable of seeing it, though all the world point their finger at
it every day. The worthless and offensive members of society,
whose existence is a social pest, invariably think themselves the

RALPH WALDO EMERSON

most ill-used people alive, and never get over their astonishment
at the ingratitude and selfishness of their contemporaries. Our
globe discovers its hidden virtues, not only in heroes and arch-
angels, but in gossips and nurses. Is it not a rare contrivance
that lodged the due inertia in every creature, the conserving, re-
sisting energy, the anger at being waked or changed ? Altogether
independent of the intellectual force in each is the pride of opin-
ion, the security that we are right. Not the feeblest grandame,
not a mowing idiot, but uses what spark of perception and faculty
is left, to chuckle and triumph in his or her opinion over the ab-
surdities of all the rest. Difference from me is the measure of
absurdity. Not one has a misgiving of being wrong. Was it not
a bright thought that made things cohere with this bitumen,
fastest of cements? But, in the midst of this chuckle of self-
gratulation, some figure goes by, which Thersites, too, can love
and admire. This is he that should marshal us the way we were
going. There is no end to his aid. Without Plato, we should
almost lose our faith in the possibility of a reasonable book. We
seem to want but one, but we want one. We love to associate
with heroic persons, since our receptivity is unlimited; and, with
the great, our thoughts and manners easily become great. We
are all wise in capacity, though so few in energy. There needs
but one wise man in a company, and all are wise, so rapid is the
contagion.

Great men are thus a collyrium to clear our eyes from ego-
tism and enable us to see other people and their works. But
there are vices and follies incident to whole populations and ages.
Men resemble their contemporaries even more than their progen-
itors. It is observed in old couples, or in persons who have been
housemates for a course of years, that they grow alike; and, if
they should live long enough, we should not be able to know
them apart. Nature abhors these complaisances, which threaten
to melt the world into a lump, and hastens to break up such
maudlin agglutinations. The like assimilation goes on between
men of one town, of one sect, of one political party; and the
ideas of the time are in the air, and kifect all who breathe it.
Viewed from any high point, this city of New York, yonder city
of London, the western civilization, would seem a bundle of in-
sanities. We keep each other in countenance, and exasperate by
emulation the frenzy of the time. The shield against the sting-
ings of conscience is the universal practice of our contempo-

2024 RALPH WALDO EMERSON

raries. Again; it is very easy to be as wise and good as your
companions. We learn of our contemporaries what they know,
without effort, and almost through the pores of the skin. We
catch it by sympathy, or as a wife arrives at the intellectual and
moral elevations of her husband. But we stop where they stop.
Very hardly can we take another step. The great, or such as
hold of nature and transcend fashions, by their fidelity to uni-
versal ideas, are saviors from these federal errors, and defend us
from our contemporaries. They are the exceptions which we
want, where all grows alike. A foreign greatness is the antidote
for cabalism.

Thus we feed on genius, and refresh ourselves from too much
conversation with our mates, and exult in the depth of nature in
that direction in which he leads us. What indemnification is one
great man for populations of pigmies! Every mother wishes one
son a genius, though all the rest should be mediocre. But a
new danger appears in the excess of influence of the great man.
His attractions warp us from our place. We have become un-
derlings and intellectual suicides. Ah! yonder in the horizon is
our help: — other great men, new qualities, counterweights and
checks on each other. We cloy of the honey of each peculiar
greatness. Every hero becomes a bore at last. Perhaps Voltaire
was not bad-hearted, yet he said of the good Jesus, even : <( I
pray you, let me never hear that man's name again.* They cry
up the virtues of George Washington, — "Damn George Washing-
ton ! * is the poor Jacobin's whole speech and confutation. But
it is human nature's indispensable defense. The centripetence
augments the centrifugence. We balance one man with his op-
posite; and the health of the state depends on the seesaw.

There is, however, a speedy limit to the use of heroes. Every
genius is defended from approach by quantities of unavailable-
ness. They are very attractive, and seem at a distance our own;
but we are hindered on all sides from approach. The more we
are drawn, the more we are repelled. There is something not
solid in the good that is done for us. The best discovery the
discoverer makes for himself. It has something unreal for his
companion, until he too has substantiated it. It seems as if the
Deity dressed each soul which he sends into nature in certain
virtues and powers not communicable to other men, and, sending
it to perform one more turn through the circle of beings, wrote,
"Not transferable,* and "Good for this trip only," on these gar-

RALPH WALDO EMERSON

2025

ments of the soul. There is something deceptive about the inter-
course of minds. The boundaries are invisible, but they are
never crossed. There is such good will to impart, and such good
will to receive, that each threatens to become the other; but the
law of individuality collects its secret strength: you are you, and
I am I, and so we remain.

For Nature wishes everything to remain itself; and, whilst
every individual strives to grow and exclude, and to exclude and
grow, to the extremities of the universe, and to impose the law
of its being on every other creature, Nature steadily aims to pro-
tect each against every other. Each is self-defended. Nothing
is more marked than the power by which individuals are guarded
from individuals, in a world where every benefactor becomes so
easily a malefactor, only by continuation of his activity into
places where it is not due; where children seem so much at the
mercy of their foolish parents, and where almost all men are too
social and interfering. We rightly speak of the guardian angels
of children. How superior in their security from infusions of
evil persons, from vulgarity and second thought! They shed
their own abundant beauty on the objects they behold. There-
fore, they are not at the mercy of such poor educators as we
adults. If we huff and chide them, they soon come not to mind
it, and get a self-reliance; and if we indulge them to folly, they
learn the limitation elsewhere.

We need not fear excessive influence. A more generous trust
is permitted. Serve the great. Stick at no humiliation. Grudge
no office thou canst render. Be the limb of their body, the
breath of their mouth. Compromise thy egotism. Who cares
for that, so thou gain aught wider and nobler? Never mind
the taunt of Boswellism: the devotion may easily be greater
than the wretched pride which is guarding its own skirts. Be
another: not thyself, but a Platonist; not a soul, but a Christian;
not a naturalist, but a Cartesian; not a poet, but a Shakesperean.
In vain, the wheels of tendency will not stop, nor will all the
forces of inertia, fear, or of love itself, hold thee there. On,
and forever onward! The microscope observes a monad or
wheel-insect among the infusories circulating in water. Pres-
ently, a dot appears on the animal, which enlarges to a slit, and
it becomes two perfect animals. The ever-proceeding detachment
appears not less in all thought, and in society. Children think
they cannot live without their parents. But, long before they

2026 RALPH WALDO EMERSON

are aware of it, the black dot has appeared, and the detachment
taken place. Any accident will now reveal to them their inde-
pendence.

But <c great men >} : — the word is injurious. Is there caste ? is
there fate ? What becomes of the promise to virtue ? The thought-
ful youth laments the superfoetation of nature. <( Generous and
handsome,* he says, <(is your hero; but look at yonder poor
Paddy, whose country is his wheelbarrow; look at his whole
nation of Paddies.* Why are the masses, from the dawn of his-
tory down, food for knives and powder ? The idea dignifies a
few leaders, who have sentiment, opinion, love, self-devotion; and
they make war and death sacred; — but what for the wretches
whom they hire and kill ? The cheapness of man is every day's
tragedy. It is as real a loss that others should be low, as that
we should be low; for we must have society.

Is it a reply to these suggestions to say society is a Pestaloz-
zian school ; all are teachers and pupils in turn ? We are equally
served by receiving and by imparting. Men who know the same
things are not long the best company for each other. But bring
to each an intelligent person of another experience, and it is as
if you let off water from a lake by cutting a lower basin. It
seems a mechanical advantage, and great benefit it is to each
speaker, as he can now paint out his thought to himself. We
pass very fast, in our personal moods, from dignity to depend-
ence. And if any appear never to assume the chair, but always
to stand and serve, it is because we do not see the company in
a sufficiently long period for the whole rotation of parts to come
about. As to what we call the masses and common men — there
are no common men. All men are at last of a size; and true
art is only possible on the conviction that every talent has its
apotheosis somewhere. Fair play and an open field, and fresh-
est laurels to all who have won them! But heaven reserves an
equal scope for every creature. Each is uneasy until he has
produced his private ray unto the conclave sphere, and beheld
his talent, also, in its last nobility and exaltation.

The heroes of the hour are relatively great; of a faster
growth; or they are such in whom, at the moment of success, a
quality is ripe which is then in request. Other days will demand
other qualities. Some rays escape the common observer, and
want a finely adapted eye. Ask the great man if there be none
greater. His companions are; and not the less great but the

RALPH WALDO EMERSON

2027

more, that society cannot see them. Nature never sends a great
man into the planet, without confiding the secret to another soul.

One gracious fact emerges from these studies, — that there is
true ascension in our love. The reputations of the nineteenth
century will one day be quoted to prove its barbarism. The
genius of humanity is the real subject whose- biography is writ-
ten in our annals. We must infer much, and supply many chasms
in the record. The history of the universe is symptomatic and
life is mnemonical. No man, in all the procession of famous
men, is reason or illumination, or that essence we were looking
for, but is an exhibition, in some quarter, of new possibilities.
Could we one day complete the immense figure which these fla-
grant points compose! The study of many individuals leads us
to an elemental region wherein the individual is lost, or wherein
all touch by their summits. Thought and feeling that break out
there cannot be impounded by any fence of personality. This is
the key to the power of the greatest men, — their spirit diffuses
itself. A new quality of mind travels by night and by day in
concentric circles from its origin, and publishes itself by un-
known methods; the union of all minds appears intimate; what
gets admission to one cannot be kept out of any other; the
smallest acquisition of truth or of energy, in any quarter, is so
much good to the commonwealth of souls. If the disparities of
talent and position vanish when the individuals are seen in the
duration which is necessary to complete the career of each, even
more swiftly the seeming injustice disappears when we ascend to
the central identity of all the individuals, and know that they are
made of the substance which ordaineth and doeth.

The genius of humanity is the right point of view of history.
The qualities abide; the men who exhibit them have now more,
now less, and pass away; the qualities remain on another brow.
No experience is more familiar. Once you saw phoenixes: they
are gone; the world is not therefore disenchanted. The vessels
on which you read sacred emblems turn out to be common pot-
tery; but the sense of the pictures is sacred, and you may still
read them transferred to the walls of the world. For a time,
our teachers serve us personally, as metres or milestones of pro-
gress. Once they were angels of knowledge, and their figures
touched the sky. Then we drew near, saw their means, culture,
and limits, and they yielded their places to other geniuses.
Happy, if a few names remain so high, that we have not been

202g RALPH WALDO EMERSON

able to read them nearer, and age and comparison have not
robbed them of a ray. But, at last, we shall cease to look in
men for completeness, and shall content ourselves with their
social and delegated quality. All that respects the individual is
temporary and prospective, like the individual himself, who is
ascending out of his limits, into a catholic existence. We have
never come at the true and best benefit of any genius, so long
as we believe him an original force. In the moment when he
ceases to help us as a cause, he begins to help us more as an
effect. Then he appears as an exponent of a vaster mind and
will. The opaque self becomes transparent with the light of the
First Cause.

Yet, within the limits of human education and agency, we
may say, great men exist that there may be greater men. The
destiny of organized nature is amelioration, and who can tell its
limits? It is for man to tame the chaos; on every side, whilst
he lives, to scatter the seeds of science and of song, that climate,
corn, animals, men, may be milder, and the germs of love and
benefit may be multiplied.

177

SEP 2 9 1993